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AbiWord Weekly News #166, (2003, week 42, released 2003.10.19)
Welcome to this issue 166 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Follow-ups:
More about our two new features and Win32 coming Real Real Soon Now™
This week in development
More on the new features, no bloat AbiWord and dependency hell, Johnny Lee's final speed-up patch, Win32 in a week or two and some CVS bragging. Plusse, editor negotiates AWN readability.
Request for User Assitance
If you, or someone you know, could assist in the following languages, it would be greatly appreciated:
Afrikaans[af-ZA]If you can help, please contact either Jordi Mas or Pierre Abbat.
Assamese[as-IN]
Corsican[co-FR]
Esperanto[eo]
Estonian[et]
Farsi[fa-IR]
Frisian[fy-NL]
Hausa (Niger)[ha-NE]
Hausa (Nigeria)[ha-NG]
Hindi[hi-IN]
Croatian[hr]
Armenian[hy-AM]
Icelandic[is-IS]
Georgian[ka-GE]
Korean[ko-KR]
Cornish[kw-GB]
Marshallese (Nauru)[mh-NR]
Macedonian[mk]
Flemish (Belgium)[nl-BE]
Occitan[oc-FR]
Thai[th-TH]
Urdu[ur-PK]
Chinese (Singapore)[zh-SG]
Silliness of the Week
Since Week One, I've been battling criticism that the AWN was too fun, I mean, unreadable. To be honest, it's still here because it's fun. This leads me to ask, “How many Americans know what the Virginia Compromise was?” Unlike the Missouri compromise, this one is still in effect, and it's pretty important. Moreso, neither side got what they wanted, but everyone not involved at the time thinks everyone got what they wanted. Well, this is the NYORP Compromise. You'll understand as you begin to read the AWN. Comments are welcome.
Additionally, I was tempted to include the current poll from Footnotes; however, too few people seem to be aware of the difference between a layout engine and a word processor. Additionally, we're not winning, so, it seemed like I should avoid it until we move above 45% again. All I really want to know...kword!? KWORD!? What are you KWord people doing at FootNotes!? ~_O
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. 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:
-
Instant Zoom will return right...... ,
"QuickZoom" still not working properly and
commit: Fully fix quickZoom on Unix. : and
Commit (HEAD): Instant Zoom support for win32 :
→ The first new feature of AbiWord 2.2, InstaZoom™, has been on and off during this week. This began somewhere between the massive font cleanup and the crash on zoom fix. Martin was able to restore this with a fix that, according to him, should have been done to create the InstaZoom™ feature in the first place. Later, in "QuickZoom", Dom announces that functionality has not been fully restore, specifically, errors start occurring within character widths and font proportions. However, full restoration comes both to the POSIX and Windows systems.
§ Why does Dom call this QuickZoom? My conspiracy theory is that InstaZoom™ is way too cool for him, so, being the facist he secretly is, he's surppressing my total coolness, and in doing so, condemns Martin's like for it, thus, Pollox can found and rule Rome, or AbiCoolness, all on his ownsome. Never trust a guy from Philly...especially after he moves! It's sure nice to not lose a new feature ;o) -
On Gnome, Abiword and bloat :
→ Marco Fioretti takes a moment to remind everyone that the primary point of The RuLE Project is not to run into extensive dependencies. An executable that requires less that 4 megs seems great...unless you need another 24 megs of other applications and libraries to make it run. Marco's spent a lot of time since 2.0 came out trying to get it to run.
§ Maybe he'll just give up and give everyone LyX; people have been praising that every other release since day 1.... -
Abiword and interlingua :
→ Alberto Mardegan, a very nice user, has taken notice of our plea for alternative language translations; specifically, Interlingua. Please notice that there are several more of those, by the way. The question, however, is, “How do you create the appropriate hash file.”
§ Nope, it's not answered; that's why it's here. I don't know why anyone pays attention to Interlingua; Lojban is what all the cool kids are doing these days. -
ditching configure.in was Re: Commit: 5291 :
→ Unless there are some objections, which is unlikely, it appears that configure.in will be discontinued in version 2.2 and beyond; in its place, configure.ac will be favoured.
§ What could you possibly miss, really? As long as I don't have to know more than ./configure && make && make install && make clean I don't see how this will affect me, you or Johnny Carson. -
commit: Claas for Frame editting. and
commit: Interactively size text boxes. :
→ Shiney new frame-feature, a.k.a. text boxes, is now draggable and soon to be editable.
§ I already want to pin an Non-Existant Associative Trademark Obligation to it, but it's just not unique enough of a feature. Oh...what the hey... AbiBoxesneato -
commit: Last of Johnny Lee's speed fixes. :
→ A week later, Johnny Lee's final rtf speed up patches are in place.
§ How much does that rock? -
Commit (HEAD): fix win32 crasher and
Commit: fix uwog's win32 crasher and
Commit (HEAD,Win32): fix rulers not having numbers :
→ The release of 2.0.1 for both Windows and Linux, and possibly even QNX, is currently held back by...NOTHING! A couple of bugs will be looked into, but all is set to release within one week. If you'd like to help by using a test build, grab Jordi's most recently made copy directly.
§ Does anyone else notice how happy Dom is when things work out? “NOTHING!” is a paraphrase of “Not a D*ed thing!“ which is a paraphrase of “We're getting pretty close.” which, in context, really came out to mean “NOTHING (-:” -
Commit (HEAD): Instant Zoom support for win32 :
→ That cute li'l Nederlander brings you Win32 users that nifty new feature.... Actually, whenever Martin decides on its name, I'll add the Non-Existant Associative Trademark Obligation, also known as, the NEATO. Currently, choices are: QuickZoom, InstaZoom, Instant Zoom, TurboZoom and the Wow-Watch-That-Sh*t-Go! Zoom.
§ I just want to point out that the “TurboZoom” thing is totally Marc's idea. He's Dutch, you know. They're damaged ;o) -
commit: bug 4105, use MANIFEST file for WinXP :
→ Just so it doesn't seem like I forget about some 65% of the user base, this Manifest business seems like some generally nifty Windows XP thing. It has something to do with themes....
§ I hope you didn't expect me to have a clue... ;o)
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, e.g. solutions to problems in a preceeding thread.. This week, interesting topics on the user list included:
-
Missing Bullets :
→ User "J" has been unable to use several bullets of his choice in FreeBSD. Martin informs us that this came from earlier versions of XFT2 which failed to successfully display DingBats. Though the fix was submitted by Jim Packard four months ago, it appears to have not yet propagated to FreeBSD; however, the fix has made it to version 9 of RedHat.
§ I wonder how many police officers, assassins, street thugs and television villians had to die because of..."Missing Bullets?" -
Abiword cannot load *.txt file :
→ The emacs 21.2 manual seems to be a problem for AbiWord 2.0 to load. In fact, it's also difficult for Ted and TextMaker. The good news, as Martin tells us, is that it loads perfectly fine in CVS HEAD builds.
§ Naturally, I placed this here for unnecessary gloating purpose ;o) -
Spanish Dictionary With No accents?
Mensaje en Espaņol // :
→ User “ThaK” requests that glyph characters that are present in Latin-1 be discontinued in favour of the normal Latin-1 characters, so as, to ensure that when other receive a message, that message is equally readable to them. I should point out, however, I'm guessing based purely on Stan Goodman's translation. For those who need to know, this is already in CVS HEAD. Additionally, if you don't speak English very well please consider using, in combination with your native-language message, a machine translation, like that from Babelfish.
§ The question is, if you don't understand English very well...why on the face of the Earth would you read this? How could you possibly understand someone that thinks that BlackAdder is the height of Rowan Atkinson's career? I'm total gibberish to people who live in the same country, even! I should start an er_US file, Engrish in the United States of America. I can see it now!
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 2003.10.12 - 2003.10.18 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| Martin Sevior | 43 |
fix segfaults, mem leaks and bugs to do with background imaes in tables and gr_UnixImage, fix for reducing flicker when drawing images, don't clear all the TextRuns while printing,finally commit the last of Johnny Lee's speed fixes,
Features: Instant Zoom returns--faster than ever..., fix quickZoom for Unix, class to handle the business of interactively editing Frames, code to initially size textboxes, 3 of the 4 build systems updated for fv_FrameEdit, |
| Dom Lachowicz | 42 |
remove some redundant font members, fix listener id stuff, fix crasher on zoom, Raphael Finkel's utf8 fixes for silly glibs, fix some segvs and memory badness, fix win32 caret blink, don't let people shoot themselves in the foot (erp?)
Enchant: some iconv error return condition checks, more iconv error condition handling, call setlocale, update copyright info, cvs ignore, add personal words to the session too Building: bump version of configure.* Bugs: 5914 5915 5916 5924 |
| Marc Maurer | 24 |
.
Win32: fix crasher, fix XAP bug that caused a segfault when opening the zoom dialog, add Turbo^H^H^H^H^H^H InstantZoom support to the zoom dialog, the rulers have numbers again, add a call to Init3DColors, make the preview area react to changes in border color and background color Building: updated MSVC+++6 project files, update the build documentation in the MSVC6 module to reflect the recent changes, typo, update MSVC project file to incorporate the new FV_Frame class, |
| Hubert Figuiere | 14 |
.
Cocoa: fix event data in toolbar, double click for mouse events, fix crasher in printing, InsertTable and MergeCells dialog |
| Nadav Rotem | 5 |
.
OTS: cleaned news, using g_string_append_unichar (), removed brain dead calls to g_unichar_to_utf8, (undocumented), |
| Kenneth “Jeremy” Davis1 | 2 |
.
Bug: 4105 |
| Raphael Finkel | 2 |
.
Translations: updated to cover all new strings, produced from po/yi.po by automatic tools |
| Rui Miguel Silva Seabra | 2 |
.
Enchant: update spec to state of the art, install man page using automake pragmas |
1Kenneth "Jeremy" Davis: system-related work is Win32 unless stated otherwise.
POWs
It's happening...right after the bug thing....
Bug Update
Bug Market
![[graph]](../graphs/abi_bugs-2003.10.19.png)
This week's activity: ResoUnconf +12 (12 : 0), VeriNew +3 (4 : 1), ClosAssi +7 (7 : 0),
All markets in the positive this week, the last week before 2.0.1 is released, which will signify a final stable form of the second incarnation of AbiWord for Windows. Alan Bluespan, citing that Windows users make for the largest part of the user base, has stated that market watchers should anticipate ClosAssi to dip into the negative and has even suggested that VeriNew could go that way as well. Louis Bugkeyser, however, suggested that only ClosAssi has moderate risk of dipping into the negative, explaining that, despite the media focus on developing featuers, the primary goal of the developers is near total stablisation of the application.
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 | 82 | 2.0.x | File associate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 3778 | 46 | --- | Hanging indent setting ignores units |
| 4745 | 31 | Future | Change colour of foreground text for screen only |
| 2362 | 30 | 2.2 | AbiWord only prints across half of page |
| 4031 | 30 | Future | Hebrew status line message is not displayed correctly |
| 4722 | 30 | --- | When using -p or --print the output isn't usable |
| 5252 | 30 | 2.2 | Contrast between cursor (caret) and background is ruined ...... |
| 5794 | 30 | --- | Horizontal space and distortion at print page break in We...... |
| 5815 | 30 | --- | Variable-width font issue |
| 2868 | 25 | 2.0.x | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 4020 | 24 | --- | UTF8 strings not shown in list of spelling alternatives |
| 2421 | 23 | 2.0.x | TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat...... |
| 4733 | 20 | --- | File paths with ampersands kill preferences |
| 5061 | 20 | --- | Cursor and letters overlap |
| 1679 | 17 | --- | List changes should keep selection |
| 3216 | 15 | 2.2 | [Tabstops Cannot be Set in Second (or Third) Column |
| 3801 | 15 | Future | Incremental loader seems to struggle with large files |
| 1865 | 13 | --- | Header/footer not loaded properly from .doc |
| 3635 | 12 | --- | Format/Document/Margin/Units doesn't respect locale |
| Top 20 Requests For Enhancement | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 2183 | 451 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 4038 | 136 | --- | Outline View Support |
| 3668 | 126 | Future | Support for window tabs instead of separate windows |
| 1950 | 121 | Future | Wish for automatic Table of Contents |
| 1374 | 109 | Future | [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ... |
| 2321 | 105 | 2.2 | [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? |
| 2490 | 99 | 2.2 | Finish Cocoa Frontend |
| 2565 | 82 | Future | Add true MS Word .doc export capability |
| 1144 | 72 | Future | Improve KWord import/export filters |
| 4057 | 70 | --- | Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistency |
| 1929 | 50 | Future | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword |
| 2366 | 44 | 2.2 | implement floating frame |
| 2365 | 43 | --- | AbiWord needs 'view codes' |
| 515 | 41 | 2.0.x | columns change should only affect selected text |
| 2164 | 36 | 2.2 | Ability to set default print command anywhere |
| 1851 | 31 | Future | [rfe] Ability to create an ALL CAPS style, and Small Caps...... |
| 2186 | 30 | Future | The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles |
| 5852 | 30 | Future | Help making Labels/bussiness cards |
| 2219 | 27 | Future | AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu |
Nothing vote-wise has changed; however, 2321, [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe?, has been officially marked for 2.2.
Release HackDown
To return the moment there's a meta bug for (I'm assuming) 2.0.2 or otherwise 2.2.0. In the meantime, Dom has a thingy for 2.2.
Abi's Relatives
Several projects are used by, use or synchronise with AbiWord. Some of the most noteworthy libraries and applications will be summarised here. Some may be added under guise of the GNOME Office Suite.; others may be added because it's really just a plug by request. Want your project plugged? Send money to Dom. I'm offering rates of $10 per plug, $25 for a month-long plug, $50 for a quartly plug and $200 to go all year. P*ing us off or the discontinuation of this section does not result in a refund.
Libraries
AbiWord uses several libraries, and other sub-applications, to give it that extra bit of polish. Here, you will learn whatever news I scrape together or has been sent to me in relation to them. I wanted to do more this week, but not so much.
What you see in the CVS summary, really. I believe it's all going in the direction of term frequency.
Not one D*mned thing; back to you, Bob.
Dom does news...just not here (not much happens, I think).
Can you believe it!? Dom not only does news, but has had news going on! FIRST! Enchant is now officially a FreeDesktop.Org standard! Way to go, Dom! Second, Enchant goes 1.1.0! Want to know more? Head to the site to get links, clues and other bounds of niftiness!
Applications
AbiWord is crucial to the use of or coordinates with a number of full blown applications. Ok, I only know of, like, two. Well, there was that screen play thing, but that went straight out the window. And there was AbiMoz, but some other application has taken its place. I'm sure, once AbiWord 2.0 is seen to all, there will be more to see. Screw the Ant, it's AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom!!!
GNOME Office SuiteSince I don't know of applications outside of AbiWord that use AbiWord, I'll be doing this Gnome Office business. These people should have newsletters, so, I can steal crap from them.
I guess Jody can't write news every week :o(
Two bits from the front. First, 1.0.1 is set to release around next Monday. I'm sure it'll be the greatest thing since CVS-HEAD(right now). Second, the focus for the 1.2 release has already been decided. This focus will be around updatable data models.
And now, one of those unrelated topics I get from Rodrigo's log. Inspired by Factories, Refineries and Tools, yet another original Seth blogging thought, Rodrigo has been inspired to the idea of a type of meta application that, if actually made, would have it's own Abi-Relative section. The application would appear to the average user as a toolbar with buttons representing each of the Gnome Office (or possibly extendable to even more) applications. It would act as drag & drop interface between the applications, compensating for their weaknesses, unimplemented or unimplementable modules/intefaces and so forth. Assuming I understand this right, it could be a most valuable tool. Even if I don't understand it right, it seems like a most valuable tool.
Text Box functionality continues to grow...it's a shame nothing still happens here.
Dave Malcolm has begun implementing the recognition for states in the editor widget. The long term hope is to support all states represented in GTK. After having read “States in the editor widget”, I have little idea what the long term value is all of this, but I'm sure some of the users can guess (feel free to clue me in!).
Other
Look, a place to talk about the AWN
Now that you've seen it, I would like to add ONE MORE THING! I'm officially announcing my “Sometime Sunday” policy. That means that the AWN will be released “Sometime Sunday,” hence the name, and not necessarily within a few hours after Midnight. Additionally, any changes/corrections to be made need to be submitted on Sunday, where they will be taken into effect immediately. Thank you for your possible cooperation or willingness to give a sh*t.
2.0.1 is coming Real Soon Now™!
AbiWord? 2.0.1 is coming! RSNTM!
Dom and I worked something out before the release of 2.0 to make sure the section below (Open Source, Open Books) stays updated. I don't think I've harassed him since, but I'm sure to do so eventually.
Open Source, Open Books.
Last Updated: April 10, 2003Approximately 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. | |