Re: Abiword Win32 Unicode Strategy - thoughts and proof of concept

On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Jordi Mas wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As many of you already know Abiword in Win32 is an ANSI application.
> Since the begining of February, I have been experimenting on porting Abi
> to Unicode.
>
> I think that benefits of Unicode are clear to all:

> Some data that I think that is also relevant:
>
> * Microsoft dropped support for the last Win9x (Windows ME) on July 11,
> 2006[1]. Win9x is not longer a supported platform.

(Microsoft support, ha.)

> * In most of the webs that I have access Win9x counts bellow the 3% of users.
> May be some one can check the Abiword site stats? In any case, a decreasing
> user base.

Think it is fair to say users not upgrading their operating system very
often are less likely to update their copy of abiword very often. One of
the big selling poitns of abiword over the years has been for getting more
life out of old boxes but a solid 2.6 build (or even older versions)
should continue to cover that need well enough.

> For me, the options that we have:
>
> 1) Port Abiword completely to Unicode (after 2.6) and drop support for Win9x
> platforms (ANSI) after Abiword 2.6 and refer users always of these platforms
> to Abiword version 2.6. Keep a stable branch 2.6 that we keep updating for
> important bugs and security updates.

Sounds like the best plan assuming a 2.6 branch can survive a reasonably
long time and get security and other essential fixes.

> What I think makes more sense to me is option 1. This allows us to concentrate
> and grow as a full Unicode application without worring obout legacy systems,
> that even in developing countries, are going to be extint next year. Even for
> those, we can still offer 2.6.
>
> * My proof of concept

Great to see you have made so much progress already.

> * Estimation
>
> My estimation is that whatever approach we follow there are still two months
> work. Also, it is going to be good to have a long period of testing because
> basically all the Win32 UI classes are going to be affected. Testing will
> point out things that we missed during the porting. In fact, even
> today in STABLE the are bugs related to encoding.

Anything we can do to get more Unicode users to help with testing or is
there much non-Unicode users like myself can actually do to help with
testing?

-- 
Alan