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AbiWord Weekly News #123, (2002, week 51, released 2002.12.26)
Welcome to this issue 123 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Follow-ups:
Patch Prize died this week, go figure, or is it, Go Figuiere! With me getting caught up, the AWN will have voting...after some distro switching. Speaking of which, I think Marc is plotting against me with Mark because of my pro-Debian leanings. Final thought, I think someone should create a Project Blue Ant home page-- something very X-Files-y.
This week in development
Despite a complete lack of Patch Prize, not only has hacking continued, but it enters a new Golden Age. OK, not a Golden Age per se, but two names I've not reported in hacky-land have popped up: Mikey Cooper, from Project Blue Ant, and Chad Thomas, who gets a double-double mention. People experiencing problems with voting can rest assured much of that has gone the way of the Amiga. And, Jeremy begins experiments with the next generation of NSIS.
The users are really happy this week, because I, apparently, felt there was nothing to report! This AWN has been edited for your browser. It has been edited to fit your window pane. No, not really. Too many movies in one week.
Silliness of the Week
I think the sources for each major release of an application should come with a script that'll set up CVS data when run, allowing a user to automatically and anonymously sync with the current state of STABLE. This isn't really an RFE, just a thought, or maybe a really universal RFE....
This Issue
And remember, I give you an email address so you can talk to me, in case you're not on either mailing list.
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 up-to--date version, any particular version or special release, feel free to visit the new Latest Releases page.
DISCLAIMER: It should be generally noted that anything said before the "In this issue:" line is purely editorial.
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:
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Commit: 3758 : Dom removes all dependencies of XServer for AbiWord, allowing for commandline functionality and stdio, which in the future, will allow extended functionality, like letting Nautilus read the first few lines of a document. Hub backports this commit to resolve bug 3758 in stable
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Patch to fix breakage : Chad Thomas goes to show that you don't have to be a major, long-term developer of a project to help. Chad submits a patch to fix a build-breaking booboo Martin's preceding commit caused.
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Commit (HEAD): implement DOTTED line style on GTK2 : I think this is proof that the Mar(c/k)s are plotting against me.
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CVS HEAD: -kb set on .zabw files : Mikey, who came for the regression tests and stayed for the shrimp cocktails (or friendly developers' community), makes a commit-ett, which he doesn't think to be much but learns from Hub that is resolves bug 4454
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Fwd: Re: Bugzilla Voting Problem? : Randy "Cosmo" Kramer* shows that using the list functions of you MUA can prove remarkably useful. Earlier, Kramer had issues with voting (issues that made your editor look like a total Gilbert). After some off-list discussions, Mikey suggests (correctly) that voting for bugs with a milestone of "Future" may have been disabled. Kramer then forwards this and more thoughts back to the list where Hub unfuddles things for those who wish to vote for futuredly-marked bugs. Things go south when the topic of changing the replyto line to this returns. I would like to emphatically state, for the six-teenth time on behalf of the AbiLists, and for the six-teenth thousandth time for lists everywhere, IT SHALL NEVER HAPPEN! Most MUAs actually have the ability to reply to sender, all and even differentiate and developer rules for lists. It is better to help one person to waste the time of one hundred other.
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CVS HEAD (xft, debug, Linux) crashes on startup and Fix for dchart's crash : David's xft build of HEAD for Linux crashes on startup. Guess who jumps in to save the day! Too-doot-doo-doo: Chad Thomas! Based on Martin's response, i.e. an apology, I'm beginning to wonder who's "committing in their sleep." Perhaps Chad is the anti-Martin.
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abiword-cvs ebuild for Gentoo Linux : Oliver Burnett-Hall assists Abi-Loving Gentoo users with his own ebuild, linked to with instructions here. Mark takes the time to point out that his attempt to offer an ebuild was rejected. <gilbertian-thought joke removed for time and content>
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cvs request : Jeremy asks for a splitting of NSIS to use (abuse) NSIS2 functionality. He also points out that the Win32 nightly builds may return soon to pchasm. Dom branches NSIS and adds a module "curl" as per Jeremy's request.
Traffic on the user mailing list is sporadic at best. Often, a good topic comes up, but users tend to only respond to the original poster rather than the list (as well), which limits what I would add, as the only lone threads I typically post are announcements of great interest or importance. This week, there were no interesting topics.
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 2002.12.15 - 2002.12.21 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| fjfranklin | 42 | Cocoa: build fix; distinguished GTK from UNIX on build, more MIME/Base64 work, X/HTML export upgrades, X/HTML import now supported plus examples from that nasty bug 3762, Something about Slashdot and upgrading the readme to inform you whackos that you'll need libeps for MIME parsing, undo gilbertization of abi-spell.m4, added dyld.o (my bad, I mean dyld.m4, dirty eric), build fix by jon kare, fix nextgen.sh to allow use AM_CONDITIONAL - since AM_CONDITIONAL can't be used conditionally, wrote a mini-lecture on macro's for calling plugin within a single commit, made the xhtml import plugin import html via libtidy |
| msevior | 40 | fixed bugs in tables and section breaks, fixed about 4 more crashers with segfaults and tables, improved the appearance of an inserted footnote, speaking of footnotes (not the site)--they now: expand, contract, be "clicked in," and I think I heard rumours of magical things!; fixed cursor motion and default thickness for footnotes. |
| dom | 25 | fix from chad, ended the age of the nasty evil grey menus from UnixClipboard, hopefully fixed compilation issue, fix from chad II: return of the hanging chad, perl 5.6 fix, unbreak build from 4299 fix, fix deprecated call in UnixClipboard, made perl bindings fail if AbiWord can't load the module AbiWord.pm, and bugs ( 2780, 3656, 3758, 4299, 4419 from Mikey, 4446 and 4451 ) |
| plam | 19 | "footnote stuff" |
| hub | 8 | numerous memory leaks and a reverting of AttrProp due to a presumed fcsk up |
| uwog | 5 | removed hard-coded color (didn't Jesper do that months ago?), implement line style DOTTED, plotted against me, fixed line drawing issues caused by the DOTTED thang, typo fix by Daniel Yacob |
| phearbear* | 4 | added stubs for htmloptions and the new frame code |
| phma | 3 | Italian string update by Marco Innocenti, Italian strings typo fix, Nynorsk string update by Karl Ove Hufthammer |
| dglassey | 2 | ReadMe correction, makefile copies libcharset.h for iconv, |
| jeremyd | 2 | minor updates to Win32 build instructions |
| mcooper | 2 | updated Win32 build instructions and requirements, formatting clean-up, Win32 .zabw fix (previously invisible suffixing) |
| mpritchett | 2 | Win32 build fixes |
| mgilbert | 1 |
Then vote Mark Gilbert for Porn Magistrate Ever notice certain developers cause dirty thoughts? I mean, "better/cleaner perl detection," but don't be the house on it. |
*jordimas: system-related work is Windows unless stated otherwise.
*phearbear: Johan is Back! I mean, system-related work is QNX unless stated otherwise.
*hippietrail: Andrew is missing in action
*any by line: There should be a common means of crediting someone for a commit, rather than me guessing half-assedly. That's your topic for the rest of the week: Making Zen's life easier.
Weekly Prize Patch
Dom, with the help of all those of you who donated to help keep AbiWord great, re-established the Weekly Prize Patch. Established at $45 pre-charges (read: the financial companies' cut), the prize is awarded by the decision of Martin and Dom, both of whom must agree on the winner. Though neither Dom nor Martin may vote for themselves, they possess two "trumps" that allow them to vote for the other, therefore nullifying that other's vote. Most importantly, winning is entirely dependent on how lagered-up Martin and Dom are at the time in question.
No one!
/me thinks it would have been Frank....
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 pow4 (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) Also, what a great way to get money from Dom!
Name: Project Blue Ant
Description: Perform component-specific tests, document procedural changes and open bugs as necessary.
Advertisement: Play the game and get a hero credit; more recognition than QA!
Recommended Outline: Email abiwordtesting@matthewcraig.com and include available system types, AbiVersions and previous testing experience. Receive testing instructions which will take one to two hours to complete.
Comments: No experience required. A good way to be introduced to AbiWord contribution efforts.
System: Any and every OS.
AbiVersion: 1.0.3 only (for now at least)
Challenge level: *.... 1 star out of 5
Current Heroes: "Some of the most active were Mikey Cooper, Tom Purl and Eric Blom."
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 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 | 130 | 1.0.x | Crashing on printing |
| 3525 | 90 | --- | font incorrectly printed and spaced |
| 376 | 80 | 2.0 | File associate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 1406 | 61 | 1.0.x | xhtml documents fail to open: "Bogus html document" msg |
| 428 | 57 | 2.0 | Hitting return at the beginning of a paragraph changes fo...... |
| 3457 | 51 | --- | Crash under GNOME when printing |
| 1747 | 42 | 2.0 | background colour of text selection is always grey |
| 4432 | 36 | --- | GTK2 Input Methods Unavailable |
| 2362 | 30 | 1.0.x | AbiWord only prints across half of page |
| 3845 | 30 | --- | Scroll wheel reversed when a Windows XP setting selected |
| 3970 | 30 | --- | changing layouts can lead to showing other location than ...... |
| 4049 | 30 | --- | Crash on open file from floppy or network drive. |
| 4057 | 30 | --- | Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistency |
| 3778 | 29 | --- | Hanging indent setting ignores units |
| 4216 | 29 | --- | Wrong line length, wont justify either... |
| 2868 | 25 | 2.0 | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 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 | 573 | 2.0 | Need to support footnotes and endnotes |
| 2183 | 248 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 1374 | 96 | Future | [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ... |
| 1950 | 88 | Future | Wish for automatic Table of Contents |
| 2565 | 72 | Future | Add true MS Word .doc export capability |
| 1144 | 67 | Future | Improve KWord import/export filters |
| 2490 | 41 | 2.0 | Finish Cocoa Frontend |
| 1929 | 36 | Future | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword |
| 515 | 35 | Future | columns change should only affect selected text |
| 2186 | 30 | Future | The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles |
| 2365 | 30 | --- | AbiWord needs 'view codes' |
| 3668 | 28 | --- | Support for window tabs instead of separate windows |
| 2219 | 27 | Future | AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu |
| 2296 | 25 | Future | doc import: footnotes |
| 2169 | 24 | Future | Line numbering |
| 1935 | 22 | Future | inconsistency re "units" selection in 3 different places |
| 1762 | 20 | 2.0 | import html |
| 3233 | 20 | 2.0 | New Language preference menu |
| 3419 | 20 | Future | [RFE] Add microspacing feature (tracking) for characters |
This shouldn't be here.
Resolved Bugs
In the past week, the following Bugs have been verified as fixed. The listed Bugs have all been put in either CLOSED or RESOLVED mode as FIXED. QA for Abi for the Holidays, join Project Blue Ant. Final reminder, owners are the squishers and qa are the flushers (in case there's some question).
One other note, and this will apply across the bug area when the idea of credit comes up,
| Bugs Resolved This Week | |
| Resolution | Number |
| Resolved | 30 |
| Verified | 2 |
| Closed | 15 |
| This Week's Bug Squishers: | |
| Verified | Name |
| 16 | Dave "At Least I Don't Owe $20" Null |
| 8 | Sam "Secret Santa Hunter" TH (th...must be a Nordic name...no vowels) |
| 7 | Martin "Given enough time, I could write my own kernel" Sevior |
| 5 | Dom "The Steelers will never make to the Superbowl" Lachowicz* |
| 5 | Hubert "My dog is not a cannibal; it's Korean" Figuiere* |
| 2 | Frank "Hey, it's not like I'm 'John Johnson'" Franklin |
| 2 | Jordi "Linux is just a fad" Mas |
| 1 | Matthew "'Flashing' has so many meanings" Craig |
*Hub: this is low on the politically correct totem pole, but so am I.
*random: the developers don't choose what I shove in their name, so, hate mail goes to me. Due to some strange mental obligation to place up rms's whole name, only Rui Miguel Seabra is immune to my inter-nomen free-for-all
Flushed Bugs
What you see here are either invalid bug reports or duplicates. So, basically, I'm showing everyone else how doofy you are sometimes. On average*, confirming duplication or non-validity takes four minutes and thirty-five seconds. That's the equivalent of 8LLOC of time for Dom. Any other questions why development isn't as fast as you want?
| Non-Bugs Flushed this Week | |
| Flushed | Number |
| Invalid | 3 |
| Duplicate | 11 |
| Won't Fix | 3 |
| This Week's Most Active Bug Flushers: | |
| Verified | Name |
| 14 | Dave "Ever Victorious" Null |
| 3 | No One "in particular really loves me" |
Caught Bugs
Bug spotters, beware, we're watching you!
| Bugs Found this Week | |
| Caught | Number |
| Unconfirmed | 0...I think; should I just delete this? |
| New | 3 (I like the word "squiggle") |
| ReOpened | 3 |
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 |
|
|
down arrow on last line must goto EOL |
|
|
Can't import Cocoa RTF |
| 2223 | cannot open psiWord files (re-opened) |
|
|
crash on zoom |
|
|
Cursor not initially in hyperlink dialog |
|
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Smart Insert Hyperlink, check to see if selected text is a hyperlink |
|
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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 |
|
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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 |
|
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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) |
|
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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 |
|
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Phantom Text appears after loading file with custom tab settings |
| 4283 | // comments expose lots of bugs |
| 4304 | crash when changing font of certain text (e.g. page numbers) |
| 4363 | [STABLE] Abi crashes after document open/close if text selected |
| 4449 | EV_EditBindingMap::removeBinding() leaks |
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| removed from list: | 3324 |
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*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. |
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If this line occurs, I fugged up. Don't tell Mark.
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Open Source, Open Books. Approximately once a month, don't hedge bets, I'll get this updated by asking (read: whining at) dom. In the meantime, whenever you want to see how much is in and where it gets diverted, just peek down here.
Current Balance: $1616.00
Expenditures: $860
Unique contributors: 58*
Contributions: $2723.00 | |
| 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. | |