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AbiWord Weekly News #181,
(For the week ending January 31st, the 5th week of 2004)
Welcome to this issue #181 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Follow-ups:
Bug filing not as big as I expected...I'm disappointed in you people ;o)
This week in development
AbiWord removed from Fedora Core, just as Table of Contents have begun. Also a note to translators and great news for MacOS X users!
Request for User Assistance
Attention Indic and Arabic users! We need more of you to attempt to use and report bugs on CVS Head. As we continue to improve the glyph-shaping engine, we will need to know what is working and what is not. You, our users, are an essential part of our community development. Please participate in helping us improve the application all of us are using.
In case you haven't guessed, the fact that the plea below, languages, has remained unchanged is because no-one has even told us they're trying to help. However, we were told that two were not that different (if at all) from a close linguistic relative. That said, please-oh-please give us 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 procedures 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 have lots of yelling to do in a couple of weeks; so, everyone should have the February edition of LinuxWorld to follow me point by point. Grr! Argh!
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 50-100 postings per week. This week, interesting topics on the developer list included:
-
Table of Contents - My Plan.
:
→ Martin announces his intent on creating the much requested feature, an automated Table of Contents manager! Technical details and general hopes are outlined in this one message thread.
§ Bells rang, people screamed, love flowed...it was like The Beatles had come across the Atlantic for the first time. I can now use the word “joygasm” in a sentence! Testing release 2.0.3 on Win32
strings to .po
Translating Abiword to Lingala :
→ Due to technical reasons, translators using the po files are having difficulties getting everything translated, even when they've filled out everything in the file. Various unnecessary attempts to fix this were tried, however, if translators remembered that the script included in the appropriate directory, update.pl, serves the purpose transferring the data of one type of file into the other. Raphael's contribution, however, a script to turn strings into po files, showed where update.pl could be improved.
§ And now, the secret: Marc hates string files, despite they're manipulability and adaptability. He believes that string files should be sent to the great bit bucket, Dev Null. Most of his complaints, however, disappear if translators use the update.pl script. Actually, that's misleading, because he hates them with a passion. He's a mean spirited dork in that way. Of course, if po files could be made a little bit more easy going, we could discontinue maintaining strings altogether. Or, a new format could be made flat out to resolve Po Issues, pissues. Commit: norwegian nynorsk fixes
Commit: ispell and enchant support both nn and no :
→ Can you read Norweigen? Apparently not, as it is made of three languages, primarily Bokmål, peppered with Nynorsk and just a hint of Sami. Anyhow, to satisfy any curiosity you have, when you see “no_NO,” it is actually meant for the spoken language, but in AbiWord, it will now the meaning of Norweigen Bokmål (nb_NO).
§ This should also be a note that you should check in on any standards you're using, to make sure you're on the current version of a standard, and, more importantly, that the standard you're using is, in fact, applicable for your situation. We're removed from FC2 ?
[Fwd: Re: rawhide report: 20040128 changes]
Yay, we're back: rawhide report: 20040130 changes :
→ Abiword was temporarily removed from Fedora Core without explanation. It is expected that AbiWord will be permenantly moved to Extras to limit the immediate selections, thus, limit the number of choices for new users.
§ I have just spent an hour and one half looking for a forwarded message, which gave an explanation as to why Abiword was removed; unfortunately, I was unsuccessful, as you might guess.
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:
-
AbiWord for OSX
:
→ AbiWord 2.2 will be released for MacOS X; however, a build for 2.1.0 does not exist for testing purposes. When Hub feels that Cocoa is ready for some abuse, the very next 2.1.x series will have a binary available.
§ I'm going to make a wild stab in the dark and guess that 2.1.1 will be the first binary release to include MacOS X. error rendering to html DocBook file from abiword :
→ Shelley Santiago learns that our DocBook expertise has become lacking. Though DocBook will probably not be handled right now (unless someone steps up?), it is nice to have bugs filed against it, to track what needs to be done when someone is able to get around to fixing it.
§ Just another reminder to use bugzilla, and it is completely alright to guess.
Development
CVS StatsKeep track of the latest developments, from bug fixes to requested enhancements. You'll find it easy to watch the progress made by the developers or individual developers involved. Perhaps you'll even be encouraged to try a development build of either branch.
| Developments for 2.0 from January 25th through the 31st, 2004 | |||
| Who | Commits | In summary | |
| Marc Maurer | 2 |
Backport of Jordi's fixes for menu encodings
Platforms: → Cross Platform: menu encoding fixes From Jordi Mas → Windows: menu enconding fixes From Jordi Mas | |
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| Developments for 2.1 from January 25th through the 31st of 2004 | |||
| Who | Commits | In summary | |
| Hubert Figuiere | 35 |
Work on MacOS X continues, including two new dialogues and two bug fixes.
Features: → Tables: buttons are togglable in Format Table Dialogue → Styles: added Stylist dialog → HTML Options: HTML options dialog Platforms: → Cross Platform: fix build regarding stylist dialogue, fix name clash with Objective C in xad_Document.h, fix an annoyous warning → MacOS X: fix a warning in XCode build, buttons are togglable in Format Table Dialogue, small re-layout of dialogue functions, added feature to not inline XPMs, added Stylist dialog, HTML options dialog Building: → Project Builder: new files, split target dependencies to keep AbiWord lighter, use Complete instead, changed target Bugs: → 6348: → 6358: |
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| Tomas Frydrych | 33 |
History is written by the Revisionists, but Tomas is more of a reversionist.
Features: → Versioning History: versioning functions, hashing functions, edit time keeping, added hash32() and hash64(), extra comments, auto-revision string, remove references to uuid_t, removed misleading comment, more uuid work Platforms: → Cross Platform: versioning functions, hashing functions, added hash32() and hash64(), extra comments, auto-revision string, remove references to uuid_t, more uuid work → Windows: remove references to uuid_t File Types: → AbiWord: edit time keeping, refactoring PD_Document & AD_Document, more uuid work |
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| Martin Sevior | 30 |
While the WB is negotiating a new show I've proposed, Martin offers Table of Content Goodness.
Feature: → Table of Contents: lots of work--including menu items! Platform: → Cross Platform: make the cursor not blink if not focussed, fix a crash closing a window with stylist running, some way towards making AbiWord compile under unix, Previously on Marty the RFE Slayer: AP_STRING_ID_MSG_AutoRevision Bugs: → 6332: |
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| Dom Lachowicz | 12 |
Spelling, Swearing, and the interesting question of,
&ldqou;What dictionary does Enchant need to have to
understand that ‘f*ck” is a word?”
Hey, Karl, what is Nynorsk for that word?
Platforms: → Cross Platform: fix norwegian problem, support only nn, fix build Environment: → Distributed Files: fix norwegian nynorsk problem, support both nn and no, what the [expletive deleted] Peers: → Enchant: fix norwegian bug, what the [expletive deleted] |
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| Jordi Mas | 7 |
Windows and Catalan updated regularly on the Home Jordi Shopping Network.
Platforms: → Windows: fixes build problems, menu enconding fixes Translations: → Catalan, Spain: string update |
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| Raphael Finkel | 1 |
Yiddish...I think
Translations: → Yiddish, Generica: 7 fuzzy translation fixes |
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POWs
It's happening Really Soon Now™!
Bug Update
Bug Market
![[graph]](../graphs/abi_bugs-2004.02.01.png)
This week's activity: ResoUnconf +19 (21 : 2), VeriNew -2 (5 : 3), ClosAssi unch (0 : 0),
With only ResoUnconf in the black, the activity of this week seemed somewhat average. Alan Bluespan warns that bugs are actually becoming more and more overwhelming, ensuring that there will be a sharp correction in the future. Louis Bugkeyser, however, shows that there are signs that bugs will soon go into a stronger triage-phase, thus negating any negative fallout from a corrective period.
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 misfeatures 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 January 31st, 2004 | |||
| 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 |
| 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...... |
| 6181 | 30 | --- | cursor position is not updated when changing paragraph style... |
| 2868 | 26 | 2.0.x | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 4896 | 25 | 2.0.x | the very last character can't be selected |
| 6011 | 25 | --- | Spelling check provides bad suggestions and improperly pl...... |
| 2421 | 24 | 2.0.x | TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat...... |
| 6112 | 24 | --- | Win32 Windows Accumulate Dirt from Windows Objects | 1679 | 17 | --- | List changes should keep selection |
| 3216 | 15 | 2.2 | [Tabstops Cannot be Set in Second (or Third) Column |
| 3801 | 15 | Future | [META] Seems to struggle with large files |
| Top 20 Requests For Enhancement as of January 31st, 2004 | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 2183 | 458 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 3668 | 166 | Future | Support for window tabs instead of separate windows |
| 2490 | 126 | 2.2 | Finish Cocoa Frontend |
| 2321 | 145 | 2.2 | [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? |
| 4038 | 136 | --- | Outline View Support |
| 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 |
| 1851 | 36 | Future | [rfe] Ability to create an ALL CAPS style, and Small Caps...... |
| 2473 | 35 | 2.0.x | [rfe] Support move & resize of images anchored to a page... |
| 1235 | 35 | Future | [RFE] Not possible to change zoom and font size on toolba... |
| 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 |
| 3419 | 20 | Future | [RFE] Add microspacing feature (tracking) for characters |
This week's top bugs went untracked
Release HackDown
I laugh at your sexy voice.
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.
Would Nadav Rotem please report to the Editorial Office; Nadav Rotem, please report to the Editorial Office.
“(Version) libwpd 0.7.1 and wpd2sxw 0.6.0 released. This release fixes a serious bug in libwpd's footnote parsing code and updates wpd2sxw for all the new goodies in libwpd.”
WvWare is perfect and without a need for such foolishness.
According to the page this is linked to, Enchant will not have another release until December of 2004. Meantime, Norwegen fixes and various swear words may have gotten in this week.
Applications
AbiWord is crucial to the use of, coordinates development with, or to some extent relies upon a number of applications. Only one two of these applications make it easy for me to steal information from them, so, we're talking about a lot of blog reading.
Windows WorldHere, we'll explore our Windows associates more. Well...it's currently only the one, but it's a very important one.
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
Release Candidate 3 is out with new installer graphics and language files; it also includes a number of bug fixes, of course.
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.
If you would like to see how AbiWord's removal from Fedora Core instigated the rebirth of Gnome Office, read “Re: We're removed from FC2 ?, .”
Start expecting Release 1.2.6 in the next week.
Vivien is reviving work on the new Mergeant version; anticipate reading more about that next week.
Sven has informed me that criawips work has begun anew. Checkout the new link.
David Hoover sends a patch to fix an odd problem with whitespace. For more information about the related issues, read “Whitespace fixes in README.xml.”
Other
Look, a place to talk about the AWN
This the first temporally co-released AWN. Though I prefer to release in order, this enforces the production behaviour.
Table of Contents begins production as history and revisions start their fine tuning.
When both timelines are synchronised (when I catch up), I'll re-harass Dom; though, to this day what PayPal tells Dom doesn't agree with the csv he sends me.
I hope our MacOS X users take a queue from Shelley Santiago, and become liberal with their bug filing.
Open Source, Open Books.
Last Updated: December 6th, 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.
These are numbers from all of time! Everything since the paypal AbiFund has been setup is in here, not just this month or just this week. Just in case you didn't figure that out, I'm restating it since the PayPal incident first incited interest in this.
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. | |