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AbiWord Weekly News #84, (2001, week 11-12, released 2002.03.26)
Welcome to issue 84 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Last week, AbiWord 0.99.3 was released. Again an incredible amount of Bugs were killed, and even a few features were completed/added.
Since I was sick last week, this issue of AWN summarizes news from the period 2002.03.11-2002.03.25 (weeks 11-12 of 2002).
If you want to help with the QA process during the 0.99.x cycle, you can find nightly builds for Windows here: http://www.darklogic.org/abiword/ and less frequent (but more stable builds) here: http://www.niksbiks.dk/Abi/. For Linux/GNOME you can find nightly builds here: http://pinohuis.dhs.org/uwog/abiword/. Thanks!
In this issue:
Editor(s) of this issue: Jesper Skov
CVS Stats
| 2002.03.11 - 2002.03.24 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| dom | 209 | TextRun path (from apostle), QNX insert bookmark and hyperlink dialogs (from phearbear), image conversion, -to-png works on unix/GNOME, save image patch (from marc), doc update for save image, doc updates (from cal), fixed Bugs 2860, 2871, 2872 (partly), 2913, 2921, 2954. Template name handling change, fix spell compile, g++ patch (from phearbear), hyperlink cmd only active when there's a selection, AbiCommand work, wv reduce use of file descriptors (from row), fix memory leaks, SVG image importer, provide UT_calloc, WP importer improvements (from marc), fix script escaping bug, speller tweaks, HRText line ending changes, scripthappy work, scripthappy win32 work (from kjd), frame patch (from kjd), fix ABI_EXPORT, fixed Bug 2659 (from Peridition), wv escher patch and bounds checking (from row), save image work, toolbar tweak, fix gray column bug, WP column and section import fix, gray out columns controls when in header/footer, fix font-size/gnome-print bug, make plugins remove menu items on unload, editmethod work for plugins. |
| msevior | 89 | Implemented import/export margins to RTF, fix insert fields cursor problem, fixed Bugs 1428 (partial), 1509, 2681, 2794, 2870, and 2933. Added --plugin for GTK-only build, AbiCommand work, work around m_map contains bug, fix FestVox plugin, scripthappy fix, fix draw bug, fix header/footer bug, choose correct image if there are more in the same paragraph, selectObject return fix, AbiGimp work, mouse position fixes, round trip fields to RTF, fixed incremental loader segfault, image resize support, speed up spell check from dialog, show word count in print preview, fix various copy and paste issues, image drawing improvements, implemented remove menu item, fix load seg fault, max number of printer copies set to 200 (from Larry Kollar). |
| fjfranklin | 70 | Various wv fixes (some from vladimir), RPM spec updates (some from Gabriel Gerhardsson), build system for LinkGrammer plugin, bumped version number, plugin build system for AbiGimp and ScriptHappy, cy-GB fixes, added psiconv and abispell to modules list. Fixed Bugs 2846 and 2910. |
| mpritchett | 55 | Fixed aiksaurus crasher, Win32 fix for the left ruler/column problem, MSVC build fix, Win installer fixes and update, Win32 styles dialog change, win32 tab leaders fix, and zlib update. |
| plam | 32 | Fix Bugs 2549, 2615 (from William Lachance), 2746, 2828, 2865, 2911, 2940, and 2974. Improved hyperlinks heuristics, various compilation and leak fixes, fixed image export segfault, and fix ut_hash problem. |
| hub | 22 | QNX build fixes, Bug 2921 cleanup, fix Solaris build problem (from David Bolack), changelog typo fix, and added some doxygen docs. Fixed Bugs 2681, 2756 (from marc), and 2854. |
| phma | 18 | Catalan updates (from Jesus Corrius), Japanese updates (from Masayuki Hatta), Danish updates (from Birger Lankjaer), Bokmaal updates (from Karl Trygve Kalleberg), include Greek tooltips, Finnish update (from Ismo Makinen), Welsh updates (from Rhoslyn Prys), French typo fix, Greek updates (from Nikos Niktaris), and Nynorsk updates (from Karl Ove Hufthammer). |
| rms | 16 | pt_PT updates, gl-ES updates (from Ramon Flores), it-IT updates (from Marco Innocenti), festvox plugin, sv-SE updates to 100% (from Per Larsson). RPM spec file tweaks. |
| dchart | 7 | Changelog updates and doc updates. |
| kian | 1 | BeOS ut_path definitions. |
| tomas_f | 1 | Fixed dlgPlugins memory leak. |
Project Of the Week
POW (Project Of the Week) and the new uPOW (User Project Of the Week) is an attempt at attracting new developers and entice help from users by lowering the bar of entry to doing something constructive for AbiWord. A POW will describe a goal and often outline how to get there.
Presently we have a few unclaimed POWs. Please see the POW status page for more details.
| Type | POW | Summary |
| uPOW | 2001.17 | Where to send AbiWord announcements |
| uPOW | 2001.09 | Determining Locale Status |
| uPOW | 2001.07 | Host for AbiWord BugDay |
| uPOW | 2001.06 | Update Feature and UI matrices |
| POW | 1999.47 | Make translated dialogs fit |
| uPOW | 1999.37 | CS folks wanted... |
Bug Update
Here's the AbiWord bug update for the last week. If you can spare some time, please help us triage the bugs - you don't need to be able to program to do this.
Bug Counts
These are the bug counts for the past 4 weeks:
Date: Submitted: QA: Open: ---------------------------------------------------- 2002.03.04 162 ( +14%) 162 ( -3%) 390 ( +0%) 2002.03.11 142 ( -12%) 86 ( -46%) 394 ( +1%) 2002.03.18 155 ( +9%) 96 ( +11%) 388 ( -1%) 2002.03.25 164 ( +5%) 81 ( -15%) 397 ( +2%)
Bug Votes
As a user of AbiWord, you are able to vote on bugs you'd like to see closed. The process is quite simple:
Create yourself an account if you don't already have one.
Bring up the bug list.
Click on Bug IDs to read bug details.
If you find an interesting bug you'd like to have fixed, cast your vote by clicking on the "Vote for this bug" link on the bug description page.
You have 30 voting points that can be cast in units of 1 to 30. But please only use votes in 5, 10, or 15-unit blocks (on a single Bug) and avoid casting votes on Bugs you have reported yourself.
From the sorted list of votes, we found the current Top 10 Bugs to be:
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 1030 | Installing AbiWord messes up fonts in other applications (e.g. Netscape) | ||
| 376 | File assosciate problems for all file types with Win32Slurp | ||
| 1124 | Does not honor config/-geometry request | ||
| 1406 | xhtml documents fail to open: "Bogus html document" msg | ||
| 1271 | Postscript print formatting incorrect and inconsistent | ||
| 1747 | background colour of text selection is always grey | ||
| 1402 | Can not use other than original type1 fonts | ||
| 1545 | Help only works for localizations en-US es-ES fr-FR | ||
| 1046 | Some localized strings truncated in Windows version | ||
| 2598 | Abiword installs bogus fonts of dubious heritage |
And the Top 10 Requests For Enhancements to be:
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 1276 | Table support | ||
| 1261 | Need to support footnotes and endnotes | ||
| 1016 | PDF output would be nice | ||
| 2321 | Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? | ||
| 1950 | Wish for automatic Table of Contents | ||
| 1929 | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword | ||
| 2183 | Compatibility with StarOffice XML | ||
| 1270 | Abiword should graphical columns ala wordperfect 8/9 | ||
| 1262 | [RFE] need to rewrite RTF import | ||
| 1875 | Import of StarOffice Writer documents (*.sdw) |
Target Milestones
We are nominating bugs for the next two big releases. Users as well as developers, can have their say on which bugs to nominate by casting votes on bugs as described above. The current milestone distribution is as follows:
| Milestone | Bug count |
| Without Nomination | 255 |
| 1.0 | 72 |
| 1.2 | 35 |
| future | 212 |
Closed Bugs
Note that there are many many bugs just waiting for QA before they can be closed. Please help!
In the past week, the following 63 bugs have been closed (i.e., closed (FIXED/WORKSFORME) and verified). Note that the links have labels, so you can get a summary by moving the pointer over them.
158, 710, 911, 1090, 1186, 1404, 1735, 1739, 1741, 1759, 1764, 1774, 1799, 1932, 1955, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2038, 2064, 2091, 2100, 2103, 2125, 2131, 2132, 2141, 2170, 2180, 2208, 2239, 2262, 2280, 2351, 2390, 2393, 2408, 2441, 2455, 2497, 2510, 2554, 2558, 2559, 2640, 2714, 2756, 2764, 2834, 2846, 2858, 2860, 2867, 2870, 2871, 2872, 2887, 2916, 2919, 2929, 2933, 2934, 2954,
Latest Releases
Here are links to the latest official releases of AbiWord for various architectures and operating systems. There are also links to the latest snapshot builds of AbiWord for a subset of the architectures/operating systems.
Note that the snapshot builds may not work (at all!), but are likely to include more features and have fewer bugs than (older) official releases. Use the official releases for "production systems" and the snapshot builds for testing and when you want to help with Bug triaging.
AbiWord 0.99.3 - Release Notes
AbiWord 0.99.2 - Release Notes
AbiWord 0.99.1 - Release Notes
AbiWord 0.9.6 - Release Notes
AbiWord 0.9.5 - Release Notes
AbiWord 0.9.4 - Release Notes
AbiWord Snapshots
Linux/GNOME (i386/RPM): Provided by Marc Maurer. These are updated daily. Plugins, clip art, fonts and help files are available too.
Win32 (i386/exe): Provided by Jeremy Davis. These are updated twice a day. Plugins are available too.
Win32 (i386/exe): Provided by Nikolaj Brandt Jensen. These are updated about once a week. BiDi builds are available too.
On the Mailing List
Traffic on the developer mailing list has settled on about 200 postings per week.
You may also find interesting threads on the user and documentation lists (unfortunately the archive for the latter is broken at the moment).
This week, interesting topics on the developer list included:
let's promote localizations: Andrzej Pruszynski suggests that people get hold of the abiword domain name in different countries and make them host translated (intro) sites for AbiWord, thus helping promote AbiWord.
Intention to release 0.99.3 this Friday: Martin asked for volunteers for building binaries of the 0.99.3 release. The tag was added on the Friday as planned, and AbiWord 0.99.3 was released on the Sunday.
commit: AbiGimp plugin: Martin added a cool new plugin: AbiGimp. It allows images to be edited using the Gimp.
AbiWord in O'Reilly Net: Hub was the first to post the link to a new AbiWord article.
memory debugger: The Valgrind memory debugger is a nifty new addition to our toolsbox. After this mention of it, there's been at least a good handful of leaks fixed.
[AbiCalc] Spreadsheet proposal: Alan put his money where others usually only have hot air to offer. He put 20 Euro bounty on a simple implementation of a spreadsheet program on the AbiSource XP framework. Many different replies, ranging from "let's not dillute the development team further", over "but why don't you just use gnumeric?" to the absurd "I'd want to do that in Python using the Mono framework". The last one surprisingly spawned only constructive criticism :)
Special Interest --
From time to time, this section will contain essay-style text about various special interests of the AbiWord development.