AbiWord Weekly News #144

AbiWord Weekly News #144, (2003, week 20, released 2003.05.18)

Welcome to this issue 144 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

Follow-ups:

With 1.9.1 finally out, some of the developers have made binaries available for RedHat9 (i386&i686) and SuSE (i586). Feel free to grab them the Latest Releases page.

This week in development

Yes, we have 1.9.1 ready for your playing about (Win32 binaries STILL not available by press time). Martin has added a nice ability to copy and paste whole tables, but only after the 1.9.1 release. A c-style cast finder was created by Andrew, which I'm sure some of you may want to try out, and, finally, nyorp plays with your editor's mind just long enough to make him take a break in the middle.

Request for user assistance

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.

Silliness of the Week

length = 10^-33cm
time = 10^-43sec
This Planc guy moves three times faster than the speed of light. He's so cool.

Oh, and I wanted to talk to you about the Nederlander, before I forget. First, there's his concept of Abi the Ant. Abi's into self-mutilation nowadays...at least in Marc's world, but some hallucinogens are legal there. And then, there's the latest Plugin Dialogue that's all HIGrrrified™ for your amusement.

<EAZen> "In a fit of temporary insanity, dom declared war against Red Hat, Canadia and myself. It is unlikely he will recover anytime soon." <dom> guffaw. i am not temporarily insane. it's more of a permanent thing <MPritchett> s/temporary insanity/normalcy. ... <EAZen> dom, do you hear penguins and breaking windows when you close your eyes? <dom> EAZen: no, more like manatees. or maybe canadian geese ... <dom> oh, and i only declare war agaisnt french canadia and the provinces of saskatoon and saskectuuawaaan

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:

ATTN: tree closed for 1.9.1 , ATTN: tree open and 1.9.1 release on sf.net, release notes uploaded : So...you've heard? Get Hooked Up!
abiword 1.9.x installation breaks because of pangoxft : Dennis Heuer has an error from libpangoxft-1.0.so. If you see that mentioned in an exiting error, there are two points to know. First, check to see if Joaquin's reply about older copy of freetype is causing the problem. If that doesn't help, check Dennis' reply to Joaquin as to a functional fix to the configuration file.
1.9.1 build : David Bolack has created an MSYS build for those Win32 users who are interested. It's available here.
commit: Copy and paste whole tables. : Martin makes a commit that says it all in the title. It was sufficiently cool enough for its own post.
C-style cast finder Perl script : In this post, Andrew attached a perl script for to find C-style casts. You might find it useful in your own project. Read the post for more information and instructions.
Fwd: Re: Your mega knowledge of abi history is requested and (That other discussion) : Jan Christiansen and I have been re-pushing for consistency in logos. To break it down, there are two sets of logos: First, there are the trademark works, the "A-Swoosh" and Abi the Ant. Eons ago, the developers decided against the continued use of the trademark images, but never really committed much to that. Second, there is the pen on paper image used on Unix builds. Now, the reason the image of the pen on paper isn't on Windows, specifically, is the icon size. Since it was never made as a scalable vector graphic, it fails to re-scale to the standard legacy window size of 32x32. In order to get a final vote, Jan and I will have to re-create them in "themes" for everyone to vote on. Going through this MASSIVE thread means you have an hour to kill. Stay tuned, same logo-free time, same logo-free newsletter!
dropping BeOS port : Well, a couple of newsletters ago, I warned ya, and now, it's gone and done'd happened! Unless a miracle coder pops up...NOW!, Hubs ripping the BeOS code out of the CVS tree for 2.0 "Last chance to be a hero, Doctor." (-Majel's computer voice in a VOY episode I've since forgotten the name of it).
Several blockers in 1.9.1 : There are three points for this being on the list. One, bugs goto Bugzilla. When filing a bug, specify the exact process of reproduction, not "twiddle about a bit with the tables, type stuff funnily and occasionally sip coffee." I don't care what it takes for you, be specific to everything required to reproducing the error, like "Merge the second row last cell with second row second to the last cell; use some symbols mixed with text; go pee; drink some coffee; USENET search for some good pr0n; let the cat out; then, try to save the document." Except, try to keep only the computer related stuff included, so, you can skip the pee, coffee and cat. Third, when I close a window, I don't want the D* thing to come back without my say so! File->Exit is from the days when multi-tasking wasn't available!
All Abw docs are invalid. : The 1.9.x series had a bit of a snag, but Frank committed a patch. I'm sure 1.9.2 will DOMinate!
IP Changes to Nyorp : Just in case you're wondering...this is why you had to wait. I worried about the AWN through my entire golf game...yeah...that's the reason for the 69....
Tracker bug for final 2.0 release? : Developers don't read the AWN, kids. It's a sad fact, but it must be true. Maybe it's just Martin, because Marc and Mark love sending me corrections. But I got away with a strange and nasty comment about Dom...I just don't know, sometimes. Anyhow, the 2.0 Hackdown's title cell links directly to said bug.

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:

How to install 1.9.1 on Windows? (Total newbie!) : Ann P. Barry has just informed me that Earthlink's Monthly Newsletter has one (or more)* of the world's coolest editors. For those of you just joining in, in the version number, when the second number is even (including 0's), the software is stable. When the second number is odd, it's an unstable development series. When the second number is 9, it's a pre-beta series (not always true, but here it is). Only use odd numbered ones if you want to help us build you a better word processor (by filing bugs and answering questions, et c). Windows binaries for 1.9.1 do not currently exist, but our two or three Windows maintainers actually using Windows haven't had the time (or processing space) to build them, but keep watching the Latest Releases page for the Win32 binaries. I promise same day posting!*
libgal : Stefano Zanelli is searching for a library that Abiword appears to need. For the convenience of RH9 and SuSE8.2 users, these libraries are available on the Latest Releases page. You may thank Rui Miguel Silva Seabra and James Ogley respectively for these. The binary packages will require i686 and i586 respectively.

*one (or more): I haven't actually checked it out, as I've apparently completely missed this discussion some how; that is to say, I'm just reading this now (eleven tenny my time lasty-nighty). I love whoever this person/these people are.
*same day posting: Promise void if I can't be at the computer, or get online. Same day refers to a "within twenty-four hour period of time."

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 2003.05.11 - 2003.05.17
Who	Commits	In summary
Hubert Figuiere	67	fix a bug with excessive redraw of document when setting zoom to the same value--refactored a little bit in the mean time Project Builder: new project build files, remove an absolute path, new symbol, Cocoa: fix a problem with labels and accelerators, implement getCoverage(), fix a few bugs in list handling, dble-click is now doing the same as OK, new dialogs[insert symbol, plugin manager, zoom, wordcount, insert date time], remove obsolete stuff, scrolling works, remove verbosity and dead code, fix memory leaks, fix a crasher, some code cleanup, fix a bad crasher in timers on MacOS X--using NSLock...
Tomas Frydrych	66	twice changed bAddOffset in _tellAndMaybeAddListener() from false to true, insertBeforeFrag() methods, slight speedup of field insertion, fix MSVC problem, added some asserts expressing fundamental assertions about compiler, etc, fixed two unhandled segfaulting asserts, ut_misc.h unique id class, pd_Document.h unique id methods, ut_misc.cpp unique id class, replacing use of UT_rand with new unique id methods wv: list format processing; work toward footnote import, changes to list import following wv changes; start of footnote import, removed m_iDocPosition--use wvParseStruct.currentcp instead, footnote work (adding _append() methods), fixed page break handling, replacing use of UT_rand with new unique id methods & footnotes/endnotes, replacing use of UT_rand with new unique id methods Bugs: 4473 and 5095
Martin Sevior	28	RTF table import fixes, Copy and paste Whole Tables, fix to RTF import/export for positioned columns, fix small bug in that was prematurely terminating List properties, some fixes for copying and pasting tables -- don't save a doc if the piecetable is changing, cursor displays on the top line of the screen again Bugs: 5049 and 5094
Frank Franklin	20	community service (the alternative was to spend five years doing hard labour...assembly), metadata data output needs to be byteLength() not character length, don't build ap_CocoaDialog_MailMerge.mm - it isn't finished, build fix by Jon Kare,add a whole bunch of new code pages to list in encoding manager, some hash refinements, clean up HTML exporter a little through use of UT_UTF8Hash, fix non-fatal auto build system complaint, guess RTF font-charset 78 to be SJIS, some new XML memory-tree classes--part of my eternal quest for usability ut_string_class: declare new purely abstract UT_GenericBase class, make UT_UTF8String a subclass of UT_GenericBase, fix bug in UT_IntStrMap (UT_sint32 -> UT_UTF8String), add UT_NumberMap (UT_UTF8String -> UT_sint32), add UT_GenericUTF8Hash (UT_UTF8String -> UT_GenericBase), add UT_UTF8Hash (UT_UTF8String -> UT_UTF8String), use UT_NumberMap in ie_imp_XML, rewrite ap_Dialog_Paragraph to work around int/pointer issue Bugs: 3605, 3614(work around) and 5104
Marc Maurer	16	lots of functionality added to the WP importer, fix build... bad hippie*, glade stuff, c++ cast in ap_Dialog_Spell, forgot to work around the GNOME assumption for all the "glade stuff," sync with libwpd, typo, draw dotted gray borders around a cell when its border style is off
Dom Lachowicz	9	remove c++ comments from c code in wv pap.c, start on latex export of tables & footnotes/endnotes, mail merge fix, upgrade to gucharmap 0.7, amd64 patch from Jeremy Katz Bugs: 5087 and 5092
David Chart	5	updated documentation to reflect the 2.0 interface
Nadav Rotem	5	Generic & undocumentable bits to OTS
Michael D. Pritchett	2	fix cast issue
Jordi Mas	1	5077* partial
Rui Miguel Walrus GooGoo G'Joob Silva Seabra	1	Italian update by Marco Innocenti and Giovanni Sora

*bad hippie: Andrew "HippieTrail" Dunbar, not me. I was never a pie/sky hippie anyhow.
*Jordi Mas: system-related work is Win32 unless stated otherwise.
*5077, Jorid Mas: This bug is 1000 bugs away from being as cool as M*A*S*H

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 eleventh and seventeenth 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 (19 : 1), VeriNew -3 (4 : 7), ClosAssi +3 (6 : 3),

Da vierd drop in der, da one right towards de end der, ja, dat is da sahva going down, ja.

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
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
1613	11	1.0.x	undo does not know about replacing

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
2663	23	2.0	Normal View mode

I'll go out on a limb and guess that Tomas wiped out 4266: Punctuation misplaced in bi-directional text (Arabic and ...... Also, my fun loving miscreants, Normal View Mode has made it onto the features list.

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

Hmm, one wonders what hath happened to one's Hub..

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 23	[META] "Motion" Bugs
4467	8 of 11	[META] Find/Replace bugs and enhancements
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
5080	0 of 0	Abiword doesn't print arabic texts with vovels properly.
5119	0 of 0	setting meta-data does not dirty the document

I removed last week's scratch off from Tomas (4473), and added two more (weasely non-meta 5080 and 5119). Otherwise, no actual changes have occured.

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.