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AbiWord Weekly News #173,
      (2003, week 49, released December 8th, 2003)

Welcome to this issue 173 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

Follow-ups:

      Missed a thread.

This week in development

      Enchant, OTS and Gnumeric have made new releases, AbiWord to make its releases literally, “Any Day Now.”   More information about tabiword, abiword-related TabletPC project.   And, we have some funny Open Books update-age.   Rarely, I plug SOTW here, but this is a good collection of crap.

Request for User Assistance

      Hi there.   We're looking for people who can help keep AbiWord accurate and uptodate in a number of languages.   Please look over them and see if ither you or someone you know might be able to assist us.   Remember, your contribution is not only welcomed or encouraged but is also documented, for an easier-to-brag experience.   The languages we are looking for are listed below:

  • Afrikaans[af-ZA]
  • Armenian[hy-AM]
  • Assamese[as-IN]
  • Chinese (Singapore)[zh-SG]
  • Cornish[kw-GB]
  • Corsican[co-FR]
  • Croatian[hr]
  • Esperanto[eo]
  • Estonian[et]
  • Farsi[fa-IR]
  • Flemish (Belgium)[nl-BE]
  • Frisian[fy-NL]
  • Georgian[ka-GE]
  • Hausa (Niger)[ha-NE]
  • Hausa (Nigeria)[ha-NG]
  • Hindi[hi-IN]
  • Icelandic[is-IS]
  • Korean[ko-KR]
  • Macedonian[mk]
  • Marshallese (Nauru)[mh-NR]
  • Occitan[oc-FR]
  • Thai[th-TH]
  • Urdu[ur-PK]

      Due to the traffick of people who are trying to help with picked up languages, those who are interested in helping us are encouraged to join ither mailing list.   Please read the instructions for the list you are most interested in joining to get the correct address.   Joining, as you'll find out, is a simple three step process.   First, send a letter to one email address; second confirm you sent the letter by sending a reply, and third...oops, there is no step three.   Ok, so, excluding all the minor steps of what to click and/or type, it's really a simple two-step process.

      There are just two important reminders in using the mailing lists which all users are expected to do.   If you want your message to even make it to the list, you message will need to be in plain text only.   Due to an insurgence of a certain virus a while back, all HTML email is rejected for reasons of sanity.   Webmail users will have to figure out how to turn on plain-text only before sending email.   Second, you are required to send the language in Engrish or English.   For those of you who don't speak English well enough to send Engrish, it is recommended that you send the letter in both your native language (identify your language please) and after that, in the same message, send it in a machine-translated version of your message, like BabelFish, in case no-one who speaks your language is available to translate your message for the list.   Failure to follow these proceedures in the past have led to frustration and resentment.   We apologise in advance for any inconvenience these two requests may cause you.

Silliness of the Week

      I was talking to Jackson Harper the other day, actually, a week ago, now.   Anyhow, I was reading the mono-community web log, or something like that, and came across this perfect picture.   You see, it expresses the feelings of many developers who wonder why they get emails instead of bug reports.   You know, the, “You screwed something up,” emails with little in means of specificity.   Bugzilla can survive a really bad guess, we encourage you to guess.   We encourage you to file bug reports at any cost because we're animal lovers.   How does that pertain?   We're glad you asked.

think of the kittens

      Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton, a name I will never type out in full, has recently mentioned another possible violation of SCO against Samba.   Actually, the intent is to force SCO to back off of the IBM (seen as anti-Linux) suit.   Let me skip you to the best bits:

“I didn't say anything, but what those packets meant was that the SCO developers must have assumed that because they had passed on that 500 to 1000 lines of code to me, it was okay for them to copy the 5000 to 10,000 lines of code that I subsequently wrote.”

...

“I hereby give notice to SCO that if you drop all lawsuits against Linux, I will not pursue a copyright infringment [sic.] case against SCO.”

  Now that's something you won't find on Groklaw.   Whoo-yeah, prove me wrong.

      And, to close our, “collection,” I'd like to take the time to encourage Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin to re-unite in one more movie.   Just one.   That'd be really great, Man.   This too, you will not find on Groklaw.   I'd bet your life on it.

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:

  1. 2.0.2 release? ,
    Re: 2.0.2 release? :
    →   To bring you uptodate from last week, The various performance fixes that have gone into CVS HEAD will most likely not go into the 2.0 series.   Hub points out, however, that if the fixes were placed into one corrective applicable patch and if that patch could receive lots of testing and abuse, he would reconsider placing those performance fixes into the 2.0 series.   Martin has pointed out, however, that the effort would prove unnecessary as the 2.2 series will be released in about four months.   Though it seems too short when compared to the 1.0 to 2.0 series, Martin reason that the faster release remains possible because 2.2 lacks the kind of radical revisioning that occurred between 1.0 and 2.0.
    §   TPTB advised spectators of this thread not laugh too hard at Martin's optimism.   Martin has reasoned that the developers could implement any necessary new features in 2 months, leaving another 2 months for solid bug fixing thereafter.

  2. Text relations in ots; ,
    Text relations in ots - benchmark ,
    Summarizing articles in a new way :
    →   Open Text Summarizer advanced even further as Nadav began work on recognising relative concepts.   The ability to recognise similarities and related topics in a document possesses a common interest for projects like storage, dashboard (big page), slashcode and whedonesque.   However, only the first two have actually looked into it as of yet.   Martin points out that AbiWord can perform a very crucial function to these and similar projects; AbiWord can take documents out of their formatting, like .doc and .html, and translate them into plain text for OTS to parse.
    §   Finally, a way to prevent re-submitted stories, even when they're from different sites!   Yeah...that'll never be a part of slashcode...to revolutionary.

  3. Linux Tinderboxes revived :
    →   Marc has returned the tinderboxen for both STABLE and HEAD branches.   Users interested in trying out AbiWord can now get up-to-the-minute builds, and developers screwing up AbiWord can now get up-to-the-minute blame.
    §   Donut listings shall be tallied weekly.

  4. STABLE-2-0 is looking really nice... ,
    2.0.2, 2.1.0 - Re: commit docs: BIDI ,
    Commit: 2.0.2 ChangeLog updates :
    →   Martin and Marc continue their push towards 2.0.2.   Though no time was set down for 2.0.2, Martin has suggested the window for a 2.1.0 release may arrive on the 11th.
    §   Most users will come to really love 2.2, and some of them my show that appreciation with something green.

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.   Happily, the user list is becoming more active!   This week, interesting topics on the user list included:

  1. Printing with Abiword2.0 ,
    Re: Printing with Abiword2.0 :
    →   Sometimes the answers really aren't obvious, which is why you should use the mailing lists.   Keith Powell seeks advice on printing every other page, something brought up in “Commit (HEAD): Bugs: 5894, 5980 - Fix PS printing.”1.   Though not possible from within AbiWord specifically, it can be handled by an outside programme.   Alison Russell points out one such option, gtklp.   Another option, especially for those of you not on a unix, maybe to output the format of AbiWord to postscript, and let a postscript viewing programme print out every other page (making sure that's an option first, of course).
    §   User-to-user assitance is my favourite kind of help.

  2. Symbols :
    →   Donald Henson, like many of you, has had issues with insert symbol on unix-like systems.   The Insert Symbol dialogue is really the GNOME Character Map, which is the source of the problem.   The most current version, at least as new as that within Fedora core, no longer has this problem.
    §   WingDings was created out of an alien language that was discovered on a saucer that crashed in the Southwest in the mid-forties.


1Commit (HEAD): Bugs: 5894, 5980 - Fix PS printing:   This should have been part of last week's AWN; and I regret that it was not included.



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.   Textboxes...ooh....

CVS checkins for HEAD from November 30th to Decemember 6th, 2003
Who Commits In summary
Nadav Rotem 65 .

Peers:
Open Text Summarizer:   Inner product examples, remove warning from gnome-summariser, released version 0.4.2, relativity examples via slashdot, dashboard reference in examples, English tweak, new API that brings the ability to check how two blocks of text relate to oneanother, gcc2.96 safe, check for NULL pointers in parser.c grader.c grader-tc.c, inn-prod more robust, another slashdot story, mem leaks and boundery checks thanks to valgrind, code that will take a group of N articles and join them to one summarized article, article joiner (currently still under much needed development)

Tomas Frydrych 56 .

Platforms:
Cross Platform:   bidi menu items, fix handling of "" properties, changes needed for kbd language handling, fix setVisDirection() in fp_Run.cpp, fix document iterator related bug, changes to letPointPass(), revisions work, fixed findPointCoords()
Windows:   changes needed for kbd language handling, revert my earlier change introducing serious rounding bug

Building:
Iomega Active Disk:   script fixes

Documentation:
English, U.S.:   bidi

Martin Sevior 43 .

Platforms:
Cross Platform:   multi-selection support, insertion point stays in the split cell now, column selection work, cut/copy/paste of table columns
Unix:   fix off-by-1 expose bug in unix, restart page number limit 100000

Features:
Visual Dragging:   multi-selection support, column selection work, cut/copy/paste of table columns
Multi-Selection Support:   column selection work, cut/copy/paste of table columns, Visual Dragging works

Bugs:
6099: crash when changing style of a paragraph or removing footnotes
6128: Abiword crashes with a delete in footnotes

Marc Maurer 17 .

Platforms:
Windows:    several bug fixes regaurding languages and barbarisms From Jordi Mas,  fixes include in ut_string From Jordi Mas,  fixes leaking resources From Jordi Mas

Plugins:
AbiPaint:   const_cast build fix in ut_UnixProcess

Documentation:
English, U.S.:   update string in bidi docs

Translations:
Spanish, Spain:    Update by Francisco J. Fernandez

Bugs:
3430: (From Jordi Mas) — Can't print more than one copy on Windows
5527: (From Jordi Mas) — Broken spanish spell check

Dom Lachowicz 12 .

Platform:
Cross Platform:   change string

Peer:
Enchant:   fix bug that was plaguing the spanish dictionaries in ispell, hspell provider

Bugs:
4720:   Yiddish input method linkage to AbiWord not quite right
6042:   Problem compiling abiword-plugins 2.0.1-2

Hubert Figuiere  8 .
Platform:
MacOS X:   fix redraw — pass the correct pointer to the graphics update callback, fix memory leak, add hooks to fetch the icon name from its ID, implement icon loading from PNG file in Bundle

Build:
Project Builder:   added fv_Selection
Make:   updated

Translations:
Catalan, Spain:    Update From Jordi Mas

Frank J. Franklin  3 .

Plugins:
Documentation:   update README with Solaris bug info

Bugs:
6130:   copyright string in About dialogue needs updating

Raphael Finkel  2 .

Translations:
Yiddish:   update

Jordi Mas  2 .

Translations:
Catalan:   updated

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra  1 .
Plugins:
Star/Open Office:   missing UT_ prefix in iconv_open

CVS checkins for STABLE from November 30th to December 6th, 2003
Who Commits In summary
Marc Maurer 29 .

Platforms:
Cross Platform:    fix bugs introduced by EOP fix From Martin Sevior,  fix handling of "" properties and add bidi menu items From Tomas Frydrych,  change string From Dom Lachowicz
Unix:    make the restart page number limit 100000 From Martin Sevior

Features:
Footnotes:    fixes From Martin Sevior
Tables:    nesting fixes From Martin Sevior

Documentation:
English, U.S.:    bidi docs From Tomas Frydrych

Translations:
Spanish, Spain:    Update by Francisco J. Fernandez
Breton, France:    Update by Korvigelloú An Drouizig

Bugs:
4720:   (From Dom Lachowicz) — Yiddish input method linkage to AbiWord not quite right
6128:   (From Martin Sevior) — Abiword crashes with a delete in footnotes

Jordi Mas 15 .

Platform:
Cross Platform:   fix an include, fixes uninit data access in stable
Windows:   several bug fixes regaurding languages and barbarisms, fixes leaking resources

Translations:
Catalan, Spain:   update

Bugs:
3430:   Can't print more than one copy on Windows
5527:   Broken spanish spell check

Frank J. Franklin  4 .

Plugins:
Documentation:   update README with Solaris bug info
Building:   update ImageMagick version requirement

Bugs:
6130:   copyright string in About dialogue needs updating

Hubert Figuiere  2 .

Bugs:
6099:   crash when changing style of a paragraph or removing footnotes




POWs

      It's happening...right after the bug thing....





Bug Update


Bug Market

[graph]

      This week's activity: ResoUnconf +21 (21 : 0), VeriNew +4 (6 : 2), ClosAssi +2 (3 : 1),

      All markets brilliantly resound in the positive with this most likely final week before another release.   Alan Bluespan said to anticipate an extreme drop in the markets either next week, with the new release coming out, or in the week after, when users will have had sufficient time to test features.   Louis Bugkeyser believes that markets will remain relatively high until the first Developers' Release comes out, which is expect to be due sometime this month and quite probably just before the religious holidays.

      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 MisFeatures™ as of December 6th, 2003
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
5059  41 2.2 Recent Files breaks with international file names
5815  35 --- Variable-width font issue
4896  32 2.0.x the very last character can't be selected
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......
6011  27 --- Spelling check provides bad suggestions and improperly pl......
2868  25 2.0.x character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts...
4020  25 --- UTF8 strings not shown in list of spelling alternatives
6112  24 --- Win32 Windows Accumulate Dirt from Windows Objects
2421  23 2.0.x TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat......
4733  20 --- File paths with ampersands kill preferences
1679  17 --- List changes should keep selection
3216  15 2.2 [Tabstops Cannot be Set in Second (or Third) Column
Top 20 Requests For Enhancement as of December 6th, 2003
ID Votes Milestone Summary
2183 455 Future Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format
2321 145 2.2 [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe?
3668 136 Future Support for window tabs instead of separate windows
4038 136 --- Outline View Support
2490 126 2.2 Finish Cocoa Frontend
1950 121 Future Wish for automatic Table of Contents
1374 108 Future [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ...
4057  70 --- Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistency
1144  68 Future Improve KWord import/export filters
1929  50 Future Hyphenation is missing in Abiword
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
2473  35 2.0.x [rfe] Support move & resize of images anchored to a page...
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
2219  27 Future AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu
2169  24 Future Line numbering
3233  23 2.0.x New Language preference menu

      The list of MisFeatures gets some changes with the addition of two new bugs: 4896, the very last character can't be selected, and 6112, Win32 Windows Accumulate Dirt from Windows Objects.   Meanwhile, a major change occurs in the world of Enhancements, as 2565, Add true MS Word .doc export capability, has been discontinued and has been resolved under the WONTFIX category.   For more information about why this was done, please read the latest .DOC FAQ in the Abisource Twiki.





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.

Open Text Summarizer

      Open Text Summariser 0.4.2 Released!   Now, while you're looking at some of those new features or trying out the multi-article resummarisation in cvs now, just imagine all of that general niftiness going to work for you...under the hood of dashboard.   For those of you who like the multi-article summarisation, Nadav recommends trying it with more articles; with the current tweaks, something around 10 have worked for Nadav.   Now we see the growing coolness that is the Open Text Summarizer.

LibWPD

      News requires something...new.

WvWare

      Hahaha, why is this here?

Enchant

      Enchant 1.1.2 released!   This fixes a bug that was plaguing Spanish Ispell users and also has preliminary support for Hspell!   That was already mentioned in the CVS summaries, but now you can download it stable and everything!

Applications

      AbiWord is crucial to the use of or coordinates with a number of full blown applications.   It's incredible!   There really is still an application that uses AbiWord!

AbiFoundation

      This very unique section is for applications...application that use...uses AbiWord as the foundation for their...his software.

tabiword

      This week, some of the GnomeDesktop users got to see AbiWord for Tablets.   Well, your dedicated editor, full of kink and joy, has contacted Kevin Conroy about his project.   The information here comes from the lone email exchange included, my part covered much of the very bits many of the FootNotes readers wanted to know.   For more information, see the pdf about the Paper Augmented Digital Document.   It should be noted, though tabiword is related to PADD in some concept, it is, in reality, a totally seperate system; however, it will be folded into the PADD prototype system.

      A year ago, tabiword began as a proof of concept.   Similar to a core concept in PADDs, tabiword would blur the line between the advantages of a digital document, like one edited in AbiWord, and the advantages physical document, like on tree corpses.   To successfully create tabiword, the tools, both hardware and software, had to be limited to a very specific set.   These tools included: the latest pen TabletPC re-introduced to the market around that time, the AbiWord 1.0.4 codebase and the Logitech IO pen.

      The current state of the project focuses around research project, but which is to have a decently functional system in time to submit it to several conferences, thus negating several side-projects, like, restoring cross-platform functionality or porting the PADD functions to the 2.0 codebase.   Areas where the functionality fail were carefully avoided in demonstrative now-MPEG4-available videos.

      When Kevin finally writes a paper out of the whole thing, we might get to see some of this; however, Kevin will most likely just open the gates for further development by other people when that time comes.   Lest it say simply, it's all up in the air until then.

      I've learned quite a bit from this whole thing.   I've learned that some Windows users are kind and decent people.   I've learned you can get around the digital-only limits of libgsf.   I've learned that François Guimbretière has spent too much time with the StarFleet Technical Manual.   I've learned that Anoto gives away trade secrets to anyone at the University of Maryland.   I've learned that the proof readers of the PADD document did not catch the subtle difference between the words “they” and “their.”   I've also learned that the end of the document remains something only read by professors.   Or, possibly, I've just learned that more people send S* to stro than they do me.   Ah well, one time addition to the apps section.

      Special thanks to Kevin for catching a bad editor.   Bad, Editor...Bad.   Apologies to one and all who read this before Midnight-ish of December 10th.

GNOME Office Suite

      Since 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.

Gnumeric

      Version 1.2.2 has been released!

Gnome-DB

      You were expecting a release maybe?

Criawips

      This should die now.

Conglomerate

      Dave, in his brief presence introduced some test code for the soon-to-be GTK File Selection Dialogue.   This remains disabled for the time being because of the dependency it creates on a very late version of GTK.   You will also find on the experimental list the start of using GNOME Office's favourite library, libGSF; people interested in playing with it should report any code breakage to David.   Document Type Definition, at least for HTML, will be included in future created files, thanks to Jeff.   You wouldn't know this unless you wanted to know when Joakim was going to update the website.   That nasty, barely sorted orange bo'chit is really pushing my sanity....

Other

      Look, a place to talk about the AWN

Abiword Weekly News

      The longest AWN ever!   You don't know this, but it's true.   I've honestly been writing this thing off and on for three days.

AbiWord

      Definitely looking at two releases Real Soon Now™

Books

      Something funny with the books you should know about.   Paypal vs. the csv from paypal disagree.   The odd thing is, its exactly $700.   I do not know why, and I'm open to someone's explanation as to WTF!?.   That is the exact amount, as I'm sure you'll notice, of the money taken out for the server...which is accounted for in the csv.

AbiUsers

      Alison Russell was very helpful this week and deserves a nice prise.   I've thought about it for a minute, and got squat, so, Alison, feel free to buy yourself something.   Just say, “I would have spent this on an expensive word processor, and now, I deserve something special.”   Yeah...that works.





Open Source, Open Books.

Last Updated: December 6th, 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: $2144.20
Interest earned: $19.34

Expenditures: $2185
$210 to feed 12 people at GUADEC
$100 to pay for Marc's work on the new server
$700 to pay for the new server
$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
-   -   note: Pat and Dom went to an Italian restaurant named Dom's on Boston's North End.   Neither Pat or Dom seem to recommend visiting Dom's anytime soon.   Actually, I didn't ask Pat, but I'm pretty sure he'd agree.   Personally, I recommend avoiding Dom altogether.   Hmm, typo, what?

Unique contributors: 61*
paypal: 66
check :  3
cash  :  1
*61: plusse 3 repeat offenders whom we love dearly

Contributions: $2311.84
Less paypal and other banking fees: $167.64



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.