Re: OpenDocument annoyance list - reward?

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, [ISO-8859-1] Jean-François Fortin wrote:

> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:28:31 -0500
> From: "[ISO-8859-1] Jean-François Fortin" <web.kiddo@free.fr>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>,
> Robert Staudinger <robert.staudinger@gmail.com>,
> msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au
> Cc: abiword-dev@abisource.com
> Subject: Re: OpenDocument annoyance list - reward?
>
>
> Hello!

> Sorry for replying a bit late folks.
> This will be a long reply mail...

> Well, if I had coders around me I guess I would already have tried that,

okay, had to suggest it at least

> but, sadly, I'm in "human science" (not sure it is called that way in
> English), and I'm mostly one of the very few FOSS advocates out there
> (raised some awareness when I had the chances through oral
> presentations), there are no programmers near me :(

I am seriously considering printing/burning copies of theOpenCD and giving
them out to various people, it might stop or at least discourage people
from asking me for pirate software. (Maybe not, didn't realise they
dropped Abiword, oh well there's always portable Abiword.)

> Yeah, that's what I'm currently doing providing samples and things like
> that, I wanted to know if I could make things move a tiny bit faster
> (though that sounds really arrogant, and that's not what I want to
> mean).

Sounds fine to me, it is the reason I got involved at first and I like to
believe that by answering user questions and do a bit of bug hunting I
allow developers to do other things.

> http://tinyurl.com/y9leut
> > It might help to highlight which 3-5 of those many bugs you consider most
> > important to you. You did already mention image cropping for example.
>
> Ok, well here goes,

> PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: affecting compatibility/stability/usability
> 9852 "missing" feature: basic image cropping handling

seems like something we might be able to gather support for

> 10029 automatic column breaks for wrapping

http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10029

Not sure how I understand this request, abiword behaves much the same
as Microsoft Word 2000.

> 10085 opening multiple documents resets user preferences

I commented on this earlier, the behaviour you are seeing may well be
intentional, either that or I'm misunderstanding the description.

> 9865 add aspect ratio locking when holding the shift key - pre...
> 9451 Font defaults to "Times New Roman" even when it is not installed

hysterical raisins! [1]

(Not sure but it could be horribly difficult to fix the assumptions about
Times New Roman been that way forever.)

> 8825 Image size bound to page margins
> 9860 nested tables are imported differently depending on file ...

i dont remember even being able to do nested tables in OpenOffice (maybe
one nested table, no deeper) but it has been a while and version 2 can do
nested tables (to more depth than I'll ever need).

> 10018 the home key should bring the cursor after the bullet item

commented on this, Ms word behaviour not great, openoffice behaviour a
little better.

> 1510 Missing localization of smart quotes

If I recall correctly smart quotes have been turned off by default for
years since they never worked quite right.

> Thanks for your concern :) as you may have seen in the upper part of
> this mail however, not all of them are "critical" (trimmed about 16 of
> them).

> Yeah, I'm aware of the fact that Abiword lacks specific features that
> hinder format compatibility indirectly, sadly. The most "visible" ones
> in my files are on the top of my "must kill" list in the first part of

sometimes it really does take someone politely drawing attention to
certian areas. you can see how OLPC drives a whole area of developement
and you have put your ideas under the convenient umbrella grouping of
OpenOffice related features.

> this email. Of course these are certainly not the only ones (I think, if
> I remember correctly, Abiword lacks columns that are of different
> widths), but those are the ones that I use very often.

Depending on what you mean it is already possible, you just need to drage
those little handles in the rulers to adjust the column width.

> > OLPC is built around yet another document format called Crossmark.
> > Interest to support that has been expressed by prominent abiword
> > developers.
>
> I ready very briefly bits of the specification, that sounds interesting
> to say the least, kinda like a wiki format that could be parsed by a
> load of applications? I like the idea.

Sounds like just like wiki, yet another markup format I really do not
want to learn.

> [back to Alan's reply]
> > an easier way to barter for services might be to buy a DVD or book,
> > or even a donation to Gnome or as we approach christmas some
> > deserving charity.
>
> So if someone is willing to hunt down a good chunk of those bugs as a
> Christmas gift (in exchange for some other Christmas gift, I guess a
> book or DVD or something along those lines would fit my budget :), I
> guess that could work too ~ just don't ask for a PS3 ;)

Not much of a gamer, but the Wii - despite the daft name - is very
tempting. (Realistically I will help where I can but I will only be
able to do a bit more than you are able to do yourself.)

-- 
Alan
[1] "you are not expected to understand this"
(or this quote, both are geek jokes)