AbiWord Weekly News #114

AbiWord Weekly News #114, (2002, week 42, released 2002.10.22)

Welcome to issue 114 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

"Eric, are you getting lazy, sick or bored with the AWN?" I am bloody well not! I've suffered with you! Combo strike of CenturyTel, modem wonkiness and power outage dragged this back for about 24 hours. If the AWN ever comes out after Monday 6am ET again, I'll start doing the AWN a day early. Speaking of which, more new toys for the AWN next week, this week was dedicated to me fixing stuff I broke, and I'm not alone in doing that, am I Frank? ;-)

In fact, I've been adding lots of less visible stuff over the past couple of weeks, whether or not you've noticed; if you tour the source, you'll notice names and other dinkery for fast linking to wherever. Still, this doesn't have everything I've been intending to put in, and if there's something you want, other than a bug graph*, just give me a yodel. Ironically, roogroup's still not working, but that's ok, because there's that other address. Oh, and thanks for discontinuing to send me Windows binaries whomever you are.

With all that out of the way, here's what's going on in this week of AbiDevelopment: A would be holy war about what to do with a cursor while using the paging keys; Mozilla's Office returns; tWiki strikes again, a user makes money off of AbiWord; more Fribidi questions; RH8.0 is borken; I occasionally sprake Nederlandse, though it's mostly re-editted (I must be missing Marc); NO ONE IS DOING POWS, YOU SCREAMING BASTARDS; The Doublemint Twins™ make an appearance in bug squishing; the developers find new nick names; a new bug added to the hackdown, and yo' mama's so fat, she smells like McDonald's even when she's just breathin'! Doesn't that make you just want to go out and buy some chocolate chip cookies?

And finally, tonight/morning/afternoon/evening/tea, a new concept in the field of hacking--Graphical Hacking. William Lachance is presenting us with updated screenshots when step by step increments are done with his new status bar work. Since I've mentioned the "S" word, for those of you who want to see Abi's progress for the modern Mac, and yes, I do read the footnote's talkbacks for my own ego-stroking, behold Aqua and X.

In this issue:

Discussion
Development
Bug Update
Release HackDown
Special Interest

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.

*bug graph: If you can tell me how to get historical data from bugzilla, I'll do it myself. Otherwise, starting next week...back to the articles!

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:

Fwd: The page up/Page down debate. : Hub forwards a mis-sent message from Martin, who asks everyone interested how they'd like the page-up/down keys to affect the cursor. The cursor may either: scroll with the paging keys or stay right where it bloody well is. Though it seems natural to scroll, MS Word, the application we attempt to knock-off the "look and feel" of, doesn't do this. The argument is that this is frustrating to most users and a couple of compromises have come up since: The original proposal from Peter was to move the cursor unless shift was being used, but Holy-Usability, AbiMan! Won't people expect shift to select? So, Andrew recommends alt. Would that annoy you or un-annoy you? Perhaps you'd agree with rms' new motto -- Let's show all those users how AbiWord is better.
RE: [Mozoffice] MozOffice : Rob Campbell forwards some data of interest to the list about the proceedings of the Mozilla Office. Apparently, development is near dead, or at least the list is, so, Chris Shaffer wants to build it on Sourceforge. This is bad...because Savannah is free and good and holy and righteous and morally sacrosanct. Anywho, Abiword is one of the primary options. From the list, it's the best option; not as bloated as OpenOffice, not as platform limited as Kwrite and AbiWord HEAD has all the requested features!
Commit: change getNative8BitEncoding to return UTF-8 on linux : Christian sets up an encoding translation from native to UTF-8. Andrew discusses why this has historically been a pain in the AbiSourceSoftware, and he asks for some additional implementation.
New release of XAbiWord for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) / XDarwin : Frank releases the latest and greated (mostly untested) XAbiWord for you MacWacks. For those interested in Aqua-specific building, stay tuned...Hub's working on it (and the toolbars look nice now en everything). I 'll add the new package to statics tonight.
FAQ: Unanswered Question: : Randy Kramer learns the joys of twiki (D*ed twiki) and asks for information about the construction of AbiWord's native document format, .abw. Alan explains the basics (which are nicely available some lost page on the site) that the .abw format is encoded in XML. This is the same place that mentions how future version of old abw's will be compatible with future AbiWords.... Perhaps someone would like to put together an extensive branch-by-branch answer to the new FAQ question.
Sardinian language translation : Francesco Cheratzu and friends have been working on importing the Sardinian language in both strings and dictionary. This act of charity, however, breaks into a small discussion about language encoding standards of ISO 639. Here's some trivial factoidary to prove your geekiness: What is the only three letter language code in AbiWord? Lojban (art).
AbiWord is Great : David Chart, using HEAD, states the screamingly obvious, then adds a "things I want" list. So, what makes him so freakin' special? He writes.

This week, interesting topics the user included:

Building AbiWord 1.1.0 : Ted Pibil, wanting to use Abi's latest DocBook support, tries compiling 1.1.0. Ted failed to take note of the numerous "using fribidi with AbiWord" messages scattered across the Internet. Luckily, Frank pops in and gives some added guidance. Would be 1.1.0 users on Linux, read this now!
AW on RedHat 8.0 problems : Uri Elias is having issues on RH 8.0 resulting in issues related to a missing user profile for AbiWord. If you can help, please do.

This week, interesting topics beyond abisource included:

Re: AbiWord Weekly News #113 : Gemi has some issue with possessing a large number of TTFonts, and mistakenly blames the lack of incorporation with fontconfig. No one in particular (I'm guessing dom) does a little bit of knowledge-base-correcting (clue-ification).

Development

CVS Stats

Track 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 2002.10.14 - 2002.10.20
Who	Commits	In summary
msevior	38	RTF(importer work, work towards 4111, table autofit sizing, fix to remove extraneous blank lines), Tables (prevent from being redrawn with every key stroke, cursor motion fixing repairs, paging with 4159)
fjfranklin*	33	Defaulted Coquille content state from knowledgable to "dumb as a frog's butt," included phtml functionality into abiword (plus some minor alterations to said php-dom) (I'll try it someday; really!), undamaged & redamaged & undamaged EditMethod API, updated that whole pspell/aspell mess, wvXml for the makefle update by Martin Junius, keep a fall-back pkg.m4,assume PKG_CHECK_MODULES is defined (hmm, what if...)
jordimas*	18	win32 select language dlgbox spell checker indicator, added support for additional selectable languages
biesi	15	import/export StarOffice work, encoding, updated Deutsch translation, switching sdw plugin to use libgsf rather than libole2, require only libgsf 1.4.0 rather than 1.5.0, getDefaultEncoding to wctomb's constructor
phearbear*	7	Re-adjusted column breaking for those who use single units, some dialogue fixery and more attempts at unbreaking QNX revisions
phma	4	Amharic update by Daniel Yacob, Lojban defuzzing of by Pierre Abbat
rms	4	Better Menu Categories for AbiRPM's, Malay support from Sharuzzaman, Correct && to \|\| (spec template thang), you know, p's and q's, &&'s and \|\|'s, gotta be awake for these things.
gg	3	fixed hashdownloader building
hub	2	debug code, Aqua toolbar now has aqua icons and bug 3521

*phearbear: system-related work is QNX unless stated otherwise
*jordimas: system-related work is Windows unless stated otherwise. summaries by jordi
*fjfranklin: last two by frank; the rest from me. always he is with the making of me to check atleast one thing...sometimes out of curiosity.

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	2.0	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	2.0	background colour of text selection is always grey
1194	39	2.0	alt+xxxx does not insert special symbols
3808	35	Future	Microsoft Word .doc files may crash Abiword
2362	30	---	AbiWord only prints across half of page
4046	30	---	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	2.0	character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts...
2421	20	2.0	TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat......
3579	20	---	Save corrupted when text pasted from web page and saved a......
1394	17	2.0	on-screen landscape actually prints portrait in Win95
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	2.0	Need to support footnotes and endnotes
2321	286	Future	[RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe?
2183	229	Future	Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format
2365	105	Future	AbiWord needs 'view codes'
1374	96	Future	[RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ...
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
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
3668	23	---	Support for window tabs instead of separate windows
3233	20	2.0	New Language preference menu

Resolved 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 I feel very confident this time.

Bugs Resolved This Week
Bug ID	Description
808	Tables not imported from RTF
4111	RTF file with table crashes
4112	RTF file crashes AbiWord
4159	RTF file crashes AbiWord [ed. different numbers, different people; they must be different!]
4162	Freebsd tar.gz package seems to be corrupt [ed. nah, freebsd is generally corrupt/evil]

This Week's Most Active QA Helpers:
Verified	Name
3	Martin "Master of Tables" Sevior
1	Hubert "Resistance is Futile" Figuiere*
1	Francis "Jokes on You, Suckers!" Franklin

*Figuiere: First off, this refers to his impossible xhtml standards; even Larry Wall is sending Hub fan mail. Second, believe it or not, I only watch Star Trek™ twice a week, classics on Mondays and Enterprise on Wednesdays. I'd watch it more, but DS9 is not on around here, and some of us know that DS9 was the abso-freakin-lute best one.

To get your name in neon, help QA the Bugs. It's also great experience if you're working your way to a POW! If you want your name rather than your email address to appear or vice versa, drop me a line.

Release HackDown

This is an AbiWord Weekly News original concept: The Release Hackdown. In the table below, you can watch what bugs are being fixed in preparation for the very next release. Check the key at the bottom to understand formatting.

No pressure, guys, I'm sure only 2000 or so people will be watching to see what you do weekly. That breaks down to about 285 people daily and 12 people hourly, so, it's like being peeked at once every five minutes, literally. "Isn't that veird!?"

HackDown to 1.0.4
Bug ID	Description
2223	cannot open psiWord files (re-opened)
3008	Cursor not initially in hyperlink dialog
~~3109~~	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
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
~~3840~~	Loading World.abw crashes AbiWord"
3858	export wrong content when choosing export to "Simplified Chinese GB_2312-80" encoded text
~~4039~~	Too Many Curly Brackets in Exported LaTeX (duplicate)
4046	The spellchecker has gone gonzo since upgrading from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3
4068	Crash when mouse leaves selected header
4070	[META] crash on load bugs
4093	Program Terminates on Open
4097	Save dialog file extension weirdness
4125	.doc file does not import correctly (BiDi issues).
4183	Save/reload puts spurious characters in simple file in 1.0.3

removed from list:	3324 and 4068
Strike-out bug numbers and greyed text are resolved. Bold bug numbers and bold text are assigned. Italicized bug numbers and italicized text are unconfirmed. Removed bugs are a sign you're being screwed.

Ah, being the editor...let's talk about what's been going on. The last one in the list was just added--that's it, nothing else. The "UNCONFIRMED" is still unconfirmed, no new closings and not one new assigning. Just keeping you uptodate on The Secret Society of Porn is Art meetings Mark has in his garage.

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.