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AbiWord Weekly News #112, (2002, week 40, released 2002.10.07)
Welcome to issue 112 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
This week, with no fanfare, the developers' release, 1.1.0, was open to all who wanted to play with it, Latest Releases finally moved to a static page while the AWN gained improved bug traqing and a new feature: The Release Hackdown.
Only a few precious days ago, Dom froze HEAD for a short while to produce the first developers' release*, 1.1.0. Unexpectedly, however, his frozen 1.1.0 release crashed on startup. Happily, Marc jumped in and did the extensive amount of work at repairing, re-tarring and retagging. Other unpleasant things happened, but Marc was a true AbiHero through it all! Of course, one can understand that, as all of this is a precursor to AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom*. Sure, it may not be the easiest to use software of all time, but Dom's quite proud of it.
Hey, all y'all remember Latest Releases? Remember how it limited the variable width capabilities of some browser versions? Remember how I said I'd format and move the whole thing to a static page? Well, guess what! I did! Replacing Latest Releases will be a new concept, The Release HackDown, where you can watch Mark's progress to the next stable AbiWord 1.0.4. Also included are some nice stats and formatting. It's not that Mark's the only one working on, but due to recent events, he's now my bitch*.
Two competing thoughts about the reload button and elevators: According to me, "The reload button is a lot like an elevator button. You can push it all you want, but the server/elevator will still get there in its own due time...." According to Dom, "Unless you shift+click reload, it's a lot like the close door button on the elevator - i.e. probably not going to do anything no matter how many times you push it." This stems from the fact that "Bugzilla is currently broken," so, The Release HackDown, is only to up-to-date for Americans on the East Coast.
In this issue:
Editor(s) of this issue: E. A. Zen
If you're interested in using AbiWord for the first time, receiving a more uptodate version, any particular version or special release, feel free to visit the new Latest Releases page.
*developers' release:
A developers' release is different from the two you typically think of as a release.
It is not a stable release, so, you should not expect it to always be perfect;
yet, it will have more features and fewer of the reported bugs.
It is not a snapshot build, in that 1.1.0 will not be different tomorrow as it is today.
If you pick it up, remember, don't use it to replace your 1.0.x AbiWord (though, that shouldn't happen).
*AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom:
If you don't want to end up like the lusers in this artist's depiction, now would be a good time to support AbiWord financially.
*bitch:
The editor(s) of the AbiWord Weekly News apologise for use of such abrupt and offensive language.
This is a case, however, where ho, skank, whore, prostitute and pimpable just wouldn't work.
If the use of such language appalls you, you may be a yuppie and not ready for the world of development.
Hey, if you think this is bad, you should read the Linux Kernel (even the dev list scares some people).
Discussions
Traffic on the developer mailing list has settled at about 200-400 postings per week.
This week, interesting topics on the developer list included:
-
OSNews RedHat 8 review & AbiWord : Andrew spots Abiword in a BlueCurve preview and also notices a few complaints. Dom cheers to the idea that when people, including the author, see 1.1.0, they shall drool. This comes from the nifty use of Xft, which makes AbiWord look nicer than OpenOffice.
-
RFP: XP font mapping mechanism : Dom wants to create novel mapping technique that would allow for "aliases" for fonts, not unlike that used in CSS documents (including the AWN). However, after some thought, trying to hardcode "equivalent" fonts could pose some difficulty. Yet, the benefits out-weigh the cost, as a general module could be useful in all types of office spaces. The largest part of this discussion, however, focuses on how much of the relating issues fontconfig already covers. The concept is discussed quite fully and evolves to some noticeable extend, the thread of the week, so to speak.
-
Fwd: How to install TTF fonts on xft enabled builds. : RedHat 8.0 users may be wondering, "What does a users on RH 8.0 have to do to get a new font recognized by AbiWord?" AbiWord's Joaquin Cuenca Abela gives advice you need to know!
-
commit: initial babarism support for ispell : Jordi Mas has begun the long awaited support for barbarisms. If you've been paying attention thus far, you already know about this long discussed topic. For those of you just coming in, you can hop over to the beginning, Implementing support for barbarisms correction.
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TREE CLOSED, [release] AbiWord 1.1.0 and TREE OPEN: Yeah...preparation and release of 1.1.0. You are going to get it, aren't you!?
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Commit: FIX CRASH AT STARTUP : ACK! AbiWord's first Developers' release comes out and it crashes at start up! Dom's connection retards his capabilities, so, Marc jumps in and saves the day (sacrificing lots of sleep)! Thank you, Marc! We love you!
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Please make localization work more convenient : Andrzej Pruszyński, wanting to hack some Polish for our favourite word processor, asks the gang about string generation and localization. He also sends a thank you to Owen Stenseth "for the script generating string comparition data."
Development
CVS StatsTrack who put in how much and why. And, while you're at it, consider whether you'd like to keep your own cvs build as well. Tables...ooh....
| CVS checkins 2002.09.30 - 2002.10.06 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| hippietrail | 75 | updated MSVC for fribid, added .cvsignores, case-insensitivity for ttf, spelling checks all "blocks" but doesn't ask to continue yet, synchronized import and export to work with encody because That's the Way It's Supposed to Be™, Polish update from Andrzej_Pruszyński, and bugs ( 1440 and 2573 ) |
| fjfranklin | 27 | remove set -e & moved stderr to autogen.err, PKG_CHECK_MODULES checked from within autogen.sh, fix nasty iconv detection bug, scolded self, Cocoa( eneric support for application-level status-bar(s) & message redirection, sub-class NSBitmapImageRep retains image data, static imageFromPNG, switch splash to AP_CocoaSplash::instance(), base C++ class for window, implements XAP_StatusBar), no ispell defaults to no curl, separate treatment of version.c, define top_srcdir in wv Makefile.in, add barbarisms.cpp to both builds and bug 4110 |
| msevior | 25 | Basic RTF import, hyperlinks in BUILD documentation, fix two segfaults in fonts drop down combo |
| dom | 19 | removed an assert for still-in-use code, BUILD documentation, caret & spelling cleanups, wv(version number bumping, dah), and bugs ( 1543, 4059 and 4028 ) |
| uwog | 13 | disable for 1.1.1("apply to:" unimplemented table menu & toolbar items), cell background styles and line style to use numbers like Gnumeric (who'd want hand edit XML anyhow?), Fix FATAL CRASH at startup (danke) |
| sam | 10 |
Made cvs ignore a bunch of generated files and some code cleanups Remember, don't pollute; help keep code clean & green! |
| plam | 8 | caret stuff uses saveunders |
| jordimas* | 7 | initial barbarism support and bug 4082 |
| phma | 7 | Languages (Serbian po translation by Ivica Bogosavlevic, Italian strings update by Marco Innocenti(2) and Amharic strings update by Daniel Yacob added sr-SR.strings), updated credits file. |
| dchart | 5 | Changlog updates for 1.1.0(and -2, the fix from Marc aka uwog) |
| phearbear* | 5 | Insert Symbol Dialogue(preparation, single units, draw and some minor updates), stubs for the new caret work |
| hub | 4 | Cocoa(removed unneeded NIB file and added Info.plist to .cvsignore) |
| mpritchett | 3 | de-whined MSVC incorrect functioned issues |
| gg | 3 | added "redirect" in case abispell is to be moved (subtle) |
| mgilbert | 1 | fixed pspell work for aspell users aliasing pspell to aspell |
*phearbear: system-related work is QNX unless stated otherwise
*jordimas: system-related work is Windows unless stated otherwise
POWs
The concept of a "Project Of the Week" is to single out tasks of major interest that outside developers might be interested in providing assistance to. Until a "best way" of listing POWs come to mind, they shall be listed in a short description. Any user interested is welcome to assist in tackling these POWs. If you know someone who's interested, you can link directly to a POW, in order, they're pow3 (at the top) through pow1 (at the bottom). Reminder to developers, I can't post them if you don't submit them. Additionally, feel free to announce if one of these is finished (in case you don't mention it on the list or in the cvs)
Name: Style and/or Diction Plugins (bug 3281) (do either/or or both!)
Description: build a plugin to allow Abiword to check style and diction
Advertisement: me got no grammar fixer, help mes can't you?
Recommended Outline: Create a plugin for AbiWord that allows the checking of style and diction. The source code for the gnu style and diction tools is available here: http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html
As a prototype you might be able to hack something using the AbiCmd plugin to wrap the style and diction tools. The AikSaurus (Thesaurus) plugin should also be a helpful guide.
When you get the basics working you could try to get Abiword to display green squiggle underlines to mark errors, or otherwise work on a good user interface.
Comments: A great way to start playing with the AbiSource
System: Any OS will be fine.
Challenge level: ***.. 3 stars out of 5
Current Hero: The mastery of Kung Fu has yet to appear.
Name: Fix Windows printing boogs (bug 3239)
Description: Tackle some or more of the various bugs that cause issues in attempting to print under Windows
Advertisement: ????????????????????????????? (no, that's really the ad!)
Recommended Outline: You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments: "The problem is that printing on Windows is broken with several brand of printer drivers (see dependent bugs). It appears that with standard PostScript driver it does not happen. It appears also that version 0.9.6 had less problems than 1.0.1 so we might find out where the regression is bu diffing.
"Please, be sure to read all the bug reports. Even partial fix are accepted.
"Fixes must be done against STABLE tree and possibly ported to HEAD (the later can be done as a second step)."
This comes from Hub
Notice: This may already have been fixed with the libiconv upgrade, stay tuned!
System: Windows
Challenge level: ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero: Not one MoFo yet has had the Huevos for this POW
Name: More Windows Maintainers
Description: Jordi could always use help
Advertisement: Help free people from the oppression of MSWord today!
Recommended Outline: You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments: Wouldn't be a bad idea to start with the printing bug...
System: Windows
Challenge level: ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero: Jordi Mas
Bug Update
Bug Statistics
I'm leaving the link, guys; you put it up!
Bug Votes
These are the week's Top 20 Bugs in the categories problems and requests for enhancements. Influence next week's results by casting your own votes. Ah, another release, another change of what bugs are on the "Most Wanted" list.
| Top 20 Problems | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 3269 | 120 | --- | Crashing on printing |
| 3171 | 115 | 1.0.x | rtf sets top and bottom margins to 0 |
| 3525 | 90 | --- | font incorrectly printed and spaced |
| 376 | 80 | 1.2 | File assosciate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 1406 | 61 | 1.0.x | xhtml documents fail to open: "Bogus html document" msg |
| 1747 | 42 | 1.2 | background colour of text selection is always grey |
| 1194 | 39 | 1.2 | alt+xxxx does not insert special symbols |
| 2362 | 30 | --- | AbiWord only prints across half of page |
| 4046 | 30 | 1.0.4 | The spellchecker has gone gonzo since upgrading from 1.0....... |
| 4049 | 30 | --- | Crash on open file from floppy or network drive. |
| 4057 | 30 | --- | Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistancey |
| 3778 | 29 | --- | Hanging indent setting ignores units |
| 2868 | 25 | 1.2 | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 2421 | 20 | 1.2 | TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat...... |
| 3808 | 20 | Future | Microsoft Word .doc files may crash Abiword |
| 1394 | 17 | 1.2 | on-screen landscape actually prints portrait in Win95 |
| 3216 | 16 | 1.0.x | tabstops can't be set in second (or third) column |
| 2299 | 15 | 1.0.x | Prints incorrect margins with split page. |
| 2924 | 15 | --- | printing abw documents defaults to black pages |
| Top 20 Requests For Enhancement | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 1261 | 528 | 1.2 | Need to support footnotes and endnotes |
| 2321 | 256 | Future | [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? |
| 2183 | 229 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 1374 | 96 | Future | [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ... |
| 2365 | 90 | Future | AbiWord needs 'view codes' |
| 1950 | 87 | Future | Wish for automatic Table of Contents |
| 2463 | 79 | Future | support embedded objects |
| 1144 | 67 | Future | Improve KWord import/export filters |
| 1929 | 41 | Future | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword |
| 2565 | 41 | Future | Add true MS Word .doc export capability |
| 808 | 32 | 1.2 | Tables not imported from RTF |
| 2186 | 30 | Future | The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles |
| 3657 | 30 | Future | Rapid Document Production, Insert File |
| 2219 | 27 | Future | AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu |
| 515 | 25 | Future | columns change should only affect selected text |
| 2296 | 25 | Future | doc import: footnotes |
| 2169 | 24 | Future | Line numbering |
| 2360 | 23 | Future | Resizing bitmap images |
| 3419 | 20 | Future | [RFE] Add microspacing feature (tracking) for characters |
Verified Bugs
In the past week, the following Bugs have been verified as fixed. The listed Bugs have all been put in RESOLVED mode as either FIXED or WORKSFORME and have then been verified by the people listed below. Other causes of resolving a Bug (e.g. as INVALID) are not tracked since they usually do not represent a fixed problem. INVALID and DUPLICATE bugs will be tracked separately starting next week, and this time, I really mean it!
| Bugs Resolved This Week | |
| Bug ID | Description |
| 1543 | numeric keypad does not work in gnome |
| 2288 | save as web - margins are too small |
| 2359 | Menu localizasion error |
| 2529 | Latex export of symbols |
| 2573 | Save reverts "Encoded Text" to "Text" file type. |
| 2599 | Gnome Icons apear for spelling suggestions with the icon ... |
| 2603 | Exporting doc with pagenumbers to HTML leaves last pagenu... |
| 2698 | Hyperlinks' status bar message lingers after mouse-over |
| 2979 | Find... panel shows document name and status for no appar... |
| 3155 | Red Hat RPM's shouldn't warn about failed adding fonts |
| 3240 | Print to PDF writes weird symbols |
| 3357 | Abiword crashes when Panel "Format/Bullets and Numbering.... |
| 4059 | MS-Word import filter crashes the program |
| 4066 | Header/Footer entry in RTF format |
| 4082 | When using with a MANIFEST file for Visual Styles, some a... |
| This Week's Most Active QA Helpers: | |
| Verified | Name |
| 3 | bugs-owner |
| 2 | Dom Lachowicz |
| 2 | John L. Clark |
| 2 | Jordi Mas |
| 2 | Sam TH |
| 1 | Andrew Dunbar |
| 1 | Joaquin Cuenca Abela |
| 1 | Martin Sevior |
| 1 | tomabi |
| HackDown to 1.0.4 | |
| Bug ID | Description |
| 2223 | cannot open psiWord files (re-opened) |
| 3008 | Cursor not initially in hyperlink dialog |
|
|
Smart Insert Hyperlink, check to see if selected text is a hyperlink |
| 3171 | rtf sets top and bottom margins to 0 (re-opened) |
| 3239 | [META] Windows printing bugs |
| 3324 | Program crashes when a newline character is erased. |
| 3453 | Crashes repeatably while attempting to edit header |
| 3488 | Weird crash when editing |
| 3489 | Crash when deregistering plugins |
| 3561 | Crash on embedded AbiWord in Evolution |
| 3625 | Multi Substitution waste memory |
| 3632 | editing the numbering style of a roman numeral list hangs/crashes |
| 3645 | Page setup has a problem with margins in millimeters |
| 3678 | [STABLE]Crash when editing this Word document |
| 3686 | XAbiword version for bundle not properly set. |
| 3697 | [crash] blank abiword document viewed as text (View Source) |
| 3755 | AbiWord crashes during import of this MS Word document |
| 3766 | Dvorak Keyboard |
|
|
Loading World.abw crashes AbiWord" |
| 3858 | export wrong content when choosing export to "Simplified Chinese GB_2312-80" encoded text |
|
|
Too Many Curly Brackets in Exported LaTeX (duplicate) |
| 4046 | The spellchecker has gone gonzo since upgrading from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3 |
| 4070 | [META] crash on load bugs |
| 4093 | Program Terminates on Open |
| 4097 | Save dialog file extension weirdness |
*developers: in the case of current stable, the developers adding to the metabug consists mostly of Mark...and Hub annoying Mark. Mark doesn't retaliate because Hub is a BOFH ;-)
Special Interest --
From time to time, this section will contain essay-style text about various special interests of the AbiWord development.
SPECIAL NOTICE: If you're working on a project that is related to, affects the development of or is affected by AbiWord, feel free to contact me
| Help promote AbiWord development by donating money. The money go to a general AbiWord "fund", presently hosted by Dom Lachowicz (cinamod@hotmail.com). | |
| In order to donate money, you must have a PayPal account. If you do not already have one, the links above will allow you to open one. Please consider putting cinamod@hotmail.com in the "Referral ID" field, which results in a one-time $5 donation from PayPal to AbiWord development if you verify your account. Note that only donations of $3 or more are of interest. Sorry, this is due to the fees imposed by credit card companies and PayPal. | |
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