AbiWord Weekly News #143

AbiWord Weekly News #143, (2003, week 19, released 2003.05.11)

Welcome to this issue 143 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

Follow-ups:

1.9.1 was held back for some bug squashing good fun.

This week in development

Dom, Martin and Tomas go all out to make 1.9.1 worth your while. Really, this time, it's coming out! Also, the Open Text Summariser gets it official plugin announcement. And, we have some updated screenshots for the mail merge utility! Donuts within.

Request for user assistance

Jared Aiken has vanished off the face of the Earth!!! Unless you know how to get him back in charge of Aiksaurus, we're looking for help. The current game plan, here, is to attempt to get SourceForge to allow Frank to take over the project. Now, if you don't know, Frank has been working towards the Cocoa port of Aiksaurus, and you can catch some of it at one of his (oh, eighty) sites, Crazy Wormhole If you'd like to see evolution of Aiksaurus with Frank, I present to you two points of interest: Older Aiksaurus and Current-ish Aiksaurus.

Here's a quickie summary of Aiksaurus for those of you who don't know much about it. Aiksaurus is a set of libraries and applications which provide a thesaurus (currently English only, based on Gutenberg's Moby thesaurus) using native GUI on several platforms: UNIX (GTK+ & Qt), Win32 & MacOSX (Cocoa). The core library itself is platform-independent. The principal language is C++, with some use of Cocoa/ObjC++; wrappers are provided for C and Cocoa/ObjC. Aiksausus plugins exist for AbiWord on UNIX and Win32; the library is also used by Lyx; and the new Cocoa port provides a MacOSX NSService hook so that Safari and other such applications can use this thesaurus without Aiksaurus-specific development. And, the source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), see aiksaurus/core/COPYING.

Anything you can do to help move things along would be appreciated. After looking at Frank's desktop, I've come to the conclusion that I am the only person here who doesn't have at least one breast on my desktop.

Windows users, your help is doubly requested*. We would like to see more bug reports coming from the Windows crowd, so, if you're feeling more daring, please download and try out the Win32 binaries when they're available. If you want some sweet functionality in AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom, you will have to participate. You could also consider joining Project Blue Ant.

I'm happy to announce, without any help from you cheap weasels ;o), Mikey and Oliver, put together USD$300 and €50, respectively, for the server. You may have noticed the speed increase in loading this week's AWN.

Silliness of the Week

To get relief from bugs, Spruell makes a submission,...to the online bug-tracker established for the project. In most cases, the bug has (already!) been discovered by other users already and patches are available.

--Free Linux/OSS support, part 5: Why sys admin Darren Spruell became a convert

Based on last week's discussion, I found this to be of interest.

Want to stop unjust things from happening in chat? Join! It's #abiword at irc.gimp.org

*requested: Danger, a recent incident suggests that this may cause anxiety, anger and/or mood shifts. Windows users not taking MAOI's should have some level of alcohol within their bloodstream.

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:

Discussion
Development
Bug Update
Release HackDown

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. Actually, everything I say is purely editorial. You kind of get used to it.

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:

CVS mirror out of sync! : For those of you using the anoncvs to help test and check for bugs, you've probably seen resolved bugs remain present. The reason, as Marc points out, is that the anoncvs (along with tinderboxen and nightly builds that use it) has become out of sync with the rest of the tree. No word on how this happened or whether it has been fixed.
Does someone owe donuts? : DONUTS! Also, if Jeremy can make it to GUADEC.... A few missed defines results in the concept of making it possible to detect and plugin missing defines within the software itself. Also of interest in this thread is that Jordi admits to leaving Win32 for Mandrake 9.1, but he will continue to hack for Win32. When asked, he points out that he knows Win32 quite well and is interested in expanding his Linux knowledge, which, he points out, comes with greater freedom and all sorts of tools ^_^
Commit: mailmerge with --to , Commit: Insert Mail Merge Field dialog , Commit: improvements to the mail merge dialog , Commit: insert mail merge dialog is now non-modal and Commit: pre-populating the mail merge dialog works now : Mail merge, as you can read, is developing quite nicely, and almost equally across the formats (spare piecetable...). Of course, reading is half the fun...am I right? You want to SEE something, don't you? Well...I dunno...can I trust you? Don Quixote ^_^ I promise nothing HIGrrrified™: Field Name Original and Field Name New! and Improved! (only 24 hours later!)
commit (HEAD): rtf imp , commit (HEAD): Word and rtf import , commit (HEAD): word importer , commit (HEAD): rtf imp , wv and styles , commit:(HEAD): rtf and word import , commit (wv): styles , commit(HEAD): word style import , commit(HEAD): Word style import , commit (HEAD): Word style and commit (wv): character style : Tomas doesn't need to be imaginative; he works. "What on?" you ask? These titles aren't n/t, so, I'll lump sum-marise for you. Most of the work centers on the wv library native to Abiword and how it exports and imports both Rich Text Format and MS's .Doc format. This started out with fixing bidi and bugs and bidi bugs, but evolved into importing MS Word's "styles." People using this feature who encounter importing issues (a style-type that Abiword doesn't recognise) are encouraged to upload the file to a bug report or email them to Tomas, so, he can add the unknown style.
Thanks giving to all (to all a good thanks ;-)). : Robert G. Werner points out the "Thanksgiving" going on at Footnotes. Included there were Dom and Martin (and quite a few others in the comments). Here, Robert also thanks Hub and Rui, aka RMSS (so as not to be mistaken for that schmuck ;o).
Commit: gtk+ tree view work : On the way to Just Works,™, Dom has made it possible to double click fields and dates in a few dialogues which results in immediate placement of that data into the document. This includes some special work, once again, for the mail merge dialogues, allowing for the highest-ranked field to be moved to the top.
Commit: Ots plugin : It has no gui; it doesn't read from the table perfectly, and some how, it uses the google plugin, but the Open Text Summarizer is officially, though imperfectly, a plugin. Congratulations to Dom and Nadav.
ATTN: Intend to release 1.9.1 tomorrow : "What happened to last week's release?" you ask? There were some noteworthy issues that could be fixed in the one week time. To see which ones, jump to the CVS section, and check under Dom, Martin and Tomas, particularly the bugs.

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 importance or points of great interest. This week, interesting topics on the user list included:

"british.hash en-AU" Dictionary and error message : Ian Parkinson is having issues with hash. Not brownies, dictionaries (who has issues with brownies?). If you want to find your dictionary off of Source Forge, look for the pink crap here. If you're having issues with Source Forge (which is more and more common these days), head to Frank's site page, under Language. If your on a Linux system, and receive "Could not load the dictionary for the en-AU language," Alan has a work around here. Before going to that length, as Ian found out, make sure you've selected the right binary!
FaqFootnotesAndEndnotes : Randy Kramer, ever watchful of the Twiki (bidi-bidi-bidi), is asking for help. Pop over to the aforementioned FAQ. If you haven't met twiki yet, you'll find the link on the top left-hand side of the page, at the bottom of the "Support" section.

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 2003.05.04 - 2003.05.10
Who	Commits	In summary
Dom Lachowicz	107	latex exporter patches by Alberto Cabello Sánchez, patch to find/replace dialog from Marc "foddex", fix a couple of crashers - main one by circumventing appendStruxFmt, put ticks around the lpr example--as they really are needed, dbl-click inserts fields, fix insert symbol crash for gucharmap builds, misguided attempts to fix a selection problem i was having; OTS: changed bzero to memset, bumped version number, added new ots_doc_get_text call, official plugin created; Mail Merge: with --to from command line (stdio), insert field dialogue, new insert field dialogue, make dialogue non-modal, pre-populate insert field dialogue if --merge is specified on the cmdline (stdio), fixed some crashers! (Never sleep at Dom's house, Man! Dom castrates people for fun and money!); Bugs*: 3794, 5062 (twice--because Martin is nutjob), 5069, 5071 and 5075
Andrew Dunbar	89	Barbarisms: works for both ispell and pspell, made from language code rather than language name, aspell support for Win32, changed one of the message names for logical group with new message needed -- thus also changed all the strings and po files, instructions for building aspell support for MSVC, added URL to download aspell DLL in messagebox, added variations on the britishism "hoover" -> "vacuum" (nobody does it like vacuum), added "mom" -> "mum" & "mommy" -> "mummy" Bugs: 4771 and 4940
Martin Sevior	53	fix Page Setup, keep lines in the correct broken table, set m_tableLevel to 1 on initialization to match RTF spec (hehe, read the friendly spec), fix copy/paste, improve table clearscreen Bugs: 4709, 4991, 4995, 5019, 5032 and 5049
Frank Franklin	33	update AUTHORS list a little, fix funny type in psion, hopeful cast change to get lucky with staroffice import, change cast to C-style cast on Dom's orders (read: Wrath of Dom), correct ots plugin summary description (yes, you read right, the summariser needed its summary corrected), add UT_NumberVector & UT_NumberStack to prevent wasted interger pointer use in UT_Vector & UT_Stack (respectively) Cocoa Aiksaurus: double-click selection & search of displayed words, nearby words of failed lookups displayed, register for Apple Services (don't bet house on success), disable window-close, add help files (which may work someday), panel widget for library (see Apple Services) Bug: 186942 (maybe)(Debian) What do you think Abiword will be like when bug 186,942 is filed? Hey, isn't that the speed of light in miles per second?
Nadav Rotem	33	OTS stuff
Tomas Frydrych	25	RTF&Doc: bidi work, fixed character style import, revert some changes to table code, bidi optimatisation, styles, style import, style import--fix a list import bug, word style import, more word built-in styles, retrieving name of character style Bugs: 2350, 4473 (incomplete) and 5072
Hubert Figuiere	18	new paragraph dialogue & scrolling work for Cocoa, new nibs for project build & fixed absolute path, fix broken build
David Chart	4	1.9.1 Changelog current as of 16:15 BST 4 May 2003, updated en-us main interface to match the 2.0 View menu
Jordi Mas*	4	MSYS deserves a decent live, bug fix, build fix Bug: 5025
Marc Maurer	4	fix build, fix Martin's continuing 2.96 gcc faux pas, fix typo Bug: 3851

*fun and money: Actually, I have no proof that Dom makes money off of it.
*Jordi Mas: system-related work is Win32 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.

And the award goes to:

No One
No one received the Patch Prize between the fourth and tenth of May.

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 pow5 (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). Oh, and in case you didn't notice, they're a great way to get money from Dom, really!

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 (1.0.4, I would guess, dev and cvs releases may occur as well)
Challenge level: Variable
Current Heroes: You must be magical to know how to fix this

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: 1.0.4 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."

^_^ More People find More Bugs ^_^ Back to normal POW status. However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, and we'd love to see you help! After the hyperbolizing this POW, interest has been dwindling, and there really is a lot left to get done. Personally, I think it's the holidays; however, you can't go by me, because I was going to add ASCII breasts to get more attention. On that subject, if any cute geekettes want to pose nekkid with an Abi the Ant tattoo, contact Mark Gilbert.
^_^ More People find More Bugs ^_^

Name: Style and/or Diction Plugin(s) (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
The MoFos who had the Huevos for this POW:
Johnny Lee
(crash on print)

Daniel Jensen
(text work around)

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 Heros: Jordi Mas, Jeremy Davis

Bug Update

Bug Market

This week's activity: ResoUnconf +18 (21 : 3), VeriNew +13 (22 : 9), ClosAssi -6 (2 : 8),

For information about how to view the chart, please read 142's Special Interest.

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
376	80	2.0	File associate problems for all file types with Win32Slu......
3550	60	---	Mouse wheel still bugged in documents >59 pages
428	49	2.0	Hitting return at the beginning of a paragraph changes fo......
3778	40	---	Hanging indent setting ignores units
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.
4722	30	---	When using -p or --print the output isn't usable
4745	30	Future	Change colour of foreground text for screen only
2868	25	2.0	character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts...
4947	25	2.0	Cannot change paper size
4266	23	---	Punctuation misplaced in bi-directional text (Arabic and ......
2421	20	2.0	TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat......
1394	17	2.0	on-screen landscape actually prints portrait in Win95
2924	15	---	printing abw documents defaults to black pages
3216	15	1.0.x	[Tabstops Cannot be Set in Second (or Third) Column
3801	15	---	Incremental loader seems to struggle with large files
1865	13	---	Header/footer not loaded properly from .doc
2962	13	2.0	Printer problems with Lexmark printers on Windows

Top 20 Requests For Enhancement
ID	Votes	Milestone	Summary
2183	330	Future	Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format
3668	111	---	Support for window tabs instead of separate windows
1950	109	Future	Wish for automatic Table of Contents
1374	96	Future	[RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ...
2490	96	2.0	Finish Cocoa Frontend
2565	72	Future	Add true MS Word .doc export capability
2321	70	---	[RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe?
1144	67	Future	Improve KWord import/export filters
4057	60	---	Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistency
515	41	Future	columns change should only affect selected text
2365	39	---	AbiWord needs 'view codes'
2366	39	Future	implement floating frame
1929	37	Future	Hyphenation is missing in Abiword
2186	30	Future	The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles
2219	27	Future	AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu
2164	25	Future	Ability to set default print command anywhere
2296	25	Future	doc import: footnotes
2169	24	Future	Line numbering
1235	21	Future	[RFE] Not possible to change zoom and font size on toolba......

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!?"

Stable

Yo, with 1.0.6 on the way, the 1.0.7 hackdown is only a few AWNs away.

HackDown to 1.0.5
Bug ID	Description
2223	cannot open psiWord files (re-opened)
~~2715~~	crash on zoom
3239	[META] Windows printing bugs
~~3453~~	Crashes repeatably while attempting to edit header
3488	Weird crash when editing
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
3697	[crash] blank AbiWord document viewed as text (View Source)
~~3755~~	AbiWord crashes during import of this MS Word document
3766	Dvorak Keyboard
3858	export wrong content when choosing export to "Simplified Chinese GB_2312-80" encoded text
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
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
~~4481~~	Format > Tabs dialog box completely broken
4531	Page breaks ignored in RTF
4559	section break handling is broken
4647	Abiword 1.0.4 crashes with zh_CN Chinese font locale
~~4650~~	Abiword.exe Entry Point Not Found
~~4656~~	AbiWord 1.0.4 does not compile with gcc-3.2.2 and perl-5.8.0

1	Unconfirmed
12	Unapproached
10	Assigned
7	Resolved
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. Normal bug numbers and normal text have not yet been approached.

Head

On our way to two-point-oh, affectionately referred to as, AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom.

HackDown to AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom
Bug ID	Open of Total	Description
2145	4 of 5	FCC 508 accessibility regulation compliance
2921	2 of 2	abi can leak memory [tracker bug]
3064	6 of 7	[TRACKER] AbiWord Performance
3239	20 of 38	[META] Windows printing bugs
4142	3 of 12	make AbiWord comply with GNOME HIG
4425	0 of 0	squash all warnings
4465	19 of 37	[META] Spelling bugs
4466	10 of 22	[META] "Motion" Bugs
4467	8 of 11	[META] Find/Replace bugs and enhancements
~~4473~~	~~0 of 0~~	~~numbers in bidi word doc are reversed~~
4488	1 of 13	[META] Help System Bugs
4627	11 of 16	[META] Copy/Paste bugs
5007	0 of 0	bidi in tables
5023	0 of 0	format footnote dialogue needs 'do not restart' option

Who kicks bidi's A*!? Tomas kicks bidi's A*! Who kicks bidi's A*!? Tomas kicks bidi's A*! Rock'm and Sock'm, Tomas, congrats on closing 4473: numbers in bidi word doc are reversed!

See Announce: 2.0 release plan for more details on the intended route towards Abiword II: The Wrath of Dom.

Open Source, Open Books.

Last Updated: April 10, 2003

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.

Word of caution, numbers lightly fudged due to (hopefully) temporarily incomplete data. Like a consultant's suggested price, you'll find hidden meaning in the data if you stare long and hard. Surgeon's General's Warning: Staring long and hard may have psychotropic affects; keep out of reach of people who like that sort of thing.

I cannot promise the time of de-fudging, nor can I promise there will be de-fudging any time soon. However, I feel confident that there will be some de-fudging going on.

Current Balance: $1604.34
Interest earned: $8.64

Expenditures: $950
$400 to pay for Martin's Boston Gnome Summit Trip
$400 to buy Andrew Dunbar a new computer
$ 60 to misc./entertainment expenses at GNOME summit, GUAD3C, other, paid out of dom's pocket
$225 Patch Prize (those already successfully awarded)
- $ 45 Will Lachance
- $ 45 Marc Maurer
- $ 45 Ruud Vring
- $ 45 Patrick Lam
- $ 45 Dom Lachowicz

Unique contributors: 58*
paypal: 57
check : 3
cash : 1
*58: plusse 3 repeat offenders whom we love dearly

Contributions: $2723.00
Less paypal and other banking fees: $115.00

PLEASE! 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.