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AbiWord Weekly News #126, (2003, week 02, released 2003.01.12)
Welcome to this issue 126 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Advanced Warnings:
This is a script and go edition with limited re-editing. Things that I've been meaning to do for, oh, three weeks-ish (shut up Mark) will get done this week. Also, next week, pics from a project Marc started this week, one for Silliness of the Week, and the other a lookie-lookie screen shot. If things go really well, it'll be obvious. "The F-Word" is here so you can grep for it.
This week in development
Joaquin brings a new process for handling the piece table; Dom works with Raphael Finkel on XIM, and the mailing list experiences issues.
Silliness of the Week
"I'm no Martin Sevior!"
--"FORTRAN", a person in a random IRC channel.
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 uptodate 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: fix for bug 3286 : Jordi fixes bug 3286 in HEAD and asks for it to be backported to STABLE. Hub, not having much knowledge of Windows coding, asks that someone else takes care of the implementation. Jeremy wants to, and gives a generic overview of the procedure; however, he has failed at building STABLE for some time. In the end, doo doot doo-doo, Jordi makes his first commit to STABLE.
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Piece Table with O(log(n)) operations : Joaquin plays with a new way to move through the piece table, the structure of a document while the binary works on it. The new function increases speed drastically (60,000 times by comparison); however, thus far, it has only been tested on text-only documents. Joaquin warns that it is likely the previous technique was most likely not the cause the poor speed. Martin has a few questions and would like to merge the new logic with his new footnote objects code. There is also talk about speeding up XFT builds for possessors of large numbers of fonts.
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XIM / GTK+2.0 , XIM and XIM : Raphael Finkel has issues when attempting to get AbiWord, no, actually, GTK2 to communicate with XIM. The discussion appears to need to return numerous times to the list (hence the links). Dom finds the fault lies in GTK+2.0, but, save for possibly me missing a later "XIM" thread, is waiting for more information on tracking it down, as some errors appear to be within Abiword. Eitherway, publicizing booboos heals them faster. Microsoft is a monopoly.
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abiword with recent Xft : Robert Staudinger is all a tizzy over XFT not working for AbiWord CVS (cvs/developer/the like). Joaquin pins the tail on the donkey, finding that Robert was using an out-dated XRender. This makes it a non-AbiWord issue. If you have similar problems, Robert points out that you should introduce yourself to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
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diff for nl-NL.strings : Um, heh, someone, um, by the name of, err, "a b11112" submits some Neder-strings for patching. A few lessons for the future, um, to, err, anyone that may wish to help keep translations up to date. PO files can be transliterated easily into strings but not vice versa, so, please, do them rather than strings. Second, please make sure the file(s) are free of word-wrapping and other stripping anomaly. Third, MD5 checksums can inform people if files you send get kafudged in transmission. Finally, um, sue your parents if they give you a mind-blowingly off-the-dink kind of name. Would, err, that person, um, if you haven't already, please re-send an unkafudged file.
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Wow, Abiword is looking very nice! : Nathan Bullock, in an attempt to make Hub flushed, thanks the guys for all the work thats been put in since the last time he tried AbiWord. Since Nathan suggest he might be willing to bug report, Dom recommends he try Jeremy's tinderbox releases. Personally, Nathan, I think you should be joining Project Blue Ant.
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equations : Andrzej wants everyone to vote for 2321, math equations. In case you forgot from a month or so ago, all votes for "Future" were stripped by means of unintended bug setup. Luca Padovani writes in about his gtkmathview widget for mathml, and the work considered for making it a viable bonobo component. Right now, the work is focused towards the ability to edit what is displayed. Read more on the forward from Hub. Anyone who wants to make money from Andrzej can take him up on this offer.
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abiword.com query : Jeremy et alli have discovered something I whined about on my first week here, abiword.com fails to consistently resolve. Is AbiWord.Com a second class, um, domain, or what?
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Mail server oddities : Mailing has been creating more and more B.S. than usual this past week, and this is the first person blaming the server. Of course $20 is the first person to go hunting for someone or something else to blame. I blame Jesus.
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 post are announcements of great interest or importance. This week, interesting topics on the user list included:
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2 things : Alan explains why bug number 3668 (see top20 RFE's) may remain forever.
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 2003.01.05 - 2003.01.11 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| msevior | 28 | save and readback a doc with a footnote, delete para breaks following a footnote, undo/redo now works for insert footnote, dlete spans containing footnotes references, undo delete spans containing footnotes |
| dom | 27 | ispell cleanup, start of using new 'add' save features, move some spelling functions up the food chain to the View, change to use new 'add to dict' api, associated with speller class, gtk Input Methods, iMContext work by myself and Hashao, fix potential XIM segv, found by raphiel finkel, more xim work, unref XIM context on frame deletion, add return type to fn, fix for dchart's preedit kinput 2 stuff and bugs ( and ) |
| phearbear* | 24 | compile fix for non layout units, makes the Font resp Size toolbar entry update at load, frameRefactoring bugfixes, makefile update for framerefactoring, frameRefactoring bugfixes, added support for the drag table cursors, added QNXNTO define to use the new framecode, added defined(__QNXNTO__) for qnx to use the new FrameRefactoring, added some focus fixes for the toolbar, added a setDocumentFocus() function, removed a unused function, getVBox, added CRC on images for cached phindows access, make qnx link libfribidi static, background do_Zoom bugfixes, and bug 4290 |
| jordimas | 12 | multiple property sheet instances, font chooser enhancements, |
| hub | 10 | updated .cvsignore, cvsignore update |
| hippietrail | 9 | minor spelling, grammer and typo fixing, and lots of comments, lots and lots of comments. |
| dchart | 7 | abiWord training manual, by David Buddridge, Updated to 8/1/03, the beginning of David Buddridge's tutorial, edited and reformatted for inclusion in the online documentation | fjfranklin | 7 | update wv's configure, - check for glib2 by default, - ditch pointless ImageMagick checks |
| phma | 7 | Albanian string update by Besnik Bleta, Lojban update, Malay string update by Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan |
| jeremyd | 5 | tweak, group current/all users shortcuts together, add initial support for multiple languages (via modern UI), remove version info from setup_abiword file (until I can fix Makefile), fix infinite recursive call, and bugs ( 3402 and 4120 |
| jskov | 1 | only delete pendingWord when it would have been spell-checked. This modifies a hack |
| mgilbert | 1 | reactivate the now-working (afaict) encoding manager encoding alias lookup hash table mem leak fix, fix compile warning. [ed. Dude, if I were on anything, it'd be vitamins T, H and C, so, that makes me SuperTongue!, the secret identity of Gene Simmons. |
| uwog | 1 | unbreak tbox (gcc 2.96 specific error), was pleased to see a lack of hate mail from debian users. Perhaps they all switched to gentoo (now watch me get the hate mail). |
*jordimas: system-related work is Windows unless stated otherwise.
*phearbear: system-related work is QNX unless stated otherwise.
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 posses to "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!
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).
Name: 4465
Description: This bug contains a compilation of numerous spelling-related bugs. Interested parties can do simple work, like Q&A to see what's still there, to more complex work, like dialogue fixin' and locale conversion If you have a current Abi and some time, you, too, can help
Advertisement: My spelring dilog isn nt ther
Recommended Outline: Whatever's easiest for you
Comments: All in all, there's something for everyone in there.
System: Any and every OS.
AbiVersion: Current (1.0.3, I would guess, dev and cvs releases may occur as well)
Challenge level: Variable
Current Heros: First week available
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 atleast)
Challenge level: *.... 1 star out of 5
Current Heros: "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 and Jeremy 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 assosciate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 1406 | 61 | 1.0.x | xhtml documents fail to open: "Bogus html document" msg |
| 3550 | 60 | --- | Mouse wheel still bugged in documents >59 pages |
| 4057 | 60 | --- | Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistancey |
| 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 |
| 3970 | 30 | --- | changing layouts can lead to showing other location than ...... |
| 4049 | 30 | --- | Crash on open file from floppy or network drive. |
| 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 |
| 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 | 31 | 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 | inconsistecy 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 |
| 1270 | 18 | Future | Abiword should graphical columns ala wordperfect 8/9 |
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. Can you believe I said QA will return next week when it's been here (or not been here) for three weeks? 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 | 22 |
| Verified | 2 |
| Closed | 4 |
| This Week's Bug Squishers: | |
| Verified | Name |
| 7 | Sam TH |
| 5 | Dave Null |
| 4 | Hubert Figuiere |
| 3 | Jordi Mas |
| 2 | Dom Lachowicz |
| 2 | Martin Sevior |
| 1 | David Chart |
| 1 | Frank Franklin |
| 1 | Johan Björk |
| 1 | Matthew Craig |
| 1 | Will Lachance |
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 equivelant 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 | 7 |
| Duplicate | 4 |
| Won't Fix | 0 |
| This Week's Most Active Bug Flushers: | |
| Verified | Name |
| 7 | Dave Null |
| 4 | No One |
Caught Bugs
Bug spotters, beware, we're watching you!
| Bugs Found this Week | |
| Caught | Number |
| Unconfirmed | 1 |
| New | 3 |
| ReOpened | 2 |
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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) |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
|
| removed from list: | 3324 |
|
*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. |
|
By the way, 4449 is assigned...I'll mark it as such now.
|
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. | |