Yes, 0.5.3 has only been out since last Thursday, but given the recent tree
reorg, we didn't want there to be a gratuitous difference between CVS users
and tarball users.
CAVEAT -- If you've used previous versions of AbiWord on Unix, you *will*
need to either reinstall or move your fonts. Shaw's put a lot of work into
streamlining the font installation and upgrade process so that this won't be
such a hassle in the future. For more details, see:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/April/0098.html
Selected highlights in 0.5.4 include:
1. Tree reorg. As promised, we've reorganized the source trees to better
reflect the fact that we'll be building multiple AbiSuite applications from
this source tree, and not just AbiWord. For an overview of the changes, see:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/April/0064.html
2. "Hello, Abi" sample app. The first proof-of-concept that the cross-app
framework can be used for something other than AbiWord. However, it's still
messier than we'd like, so it's not part of the default build process yet.
(In other words, do *not* use it as a basis for starting other Abi-style
apps just yet. We'll let you know when it's in better shape.) If you're
really curious, though:
cd abi/src/hello
make
3. Yet another platform (YAP). With the latest round of changes, AbiWord
now runs on BeOS/Intel in addition to BeOS/PPC. It's always great to see
AbiWord running on YAP with so little additional work. Kudos to Thomas!
For additional BeOS disclaimers, brags, and credits, see:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/April/0085.html
4. Our first localization! Jarmo Karvonen <jarmo@dawn.joensuu.fi> sent us
a set of Finnish strings for the menus, toolbars, and status messages.
Linus would be so proud. :-) It also makes for a nice update to our screen
dumps page:
http://www.abisource.com/dev_dumps.phtml
5. Better ispell dictionary support. Darren O. Benham <gecko@benham.net>
provided a patch to allow reading dictionary hash files across platforms.
Please notify Darren and the list if your platform's ispell dictionaries
can't be read. As always, suggested patches to *fix* such problems are
especially welcome. :-)
6. More VI keybindings. The VI cult is alive and well, resulting in a
bunch of list traffic, plus more keybindings from Nigel Stepp
<stepp@mithril.res.cmu.edu>. If you're wondering about the value of this
feature in a GUI-intensive WYSIWYG application like AbiWord, see the
following thread:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/April/0084.html
Enjoy!
Paul