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AbiWord Weekly News #110, (2002, week 38, released 2002.09.23)
Welcome to issue 110 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
After last week, Mark is refusing to spout rumours, rumours of rumours and even fairly safe jokes, so, I'll just mention that, um...I know this...something really important...what was it...tip of my tongue now.... Oh! Yeah!
In this issue:
Editor(s) of this issue: E. A. Zen
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:
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I have an announcement to make... : Mark answers last week's Gilbertian thought (in case you missed the updated version of the AWN). Not putting the answer up is for reasons of job security.
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aiksaurus move to gtk2, complete already? : Announcement from rms that Convert Aiksaurus to GTK+2 may already be completed.
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Re: abiword for beos : Alan informs an interested party that the AbiWord port to Be is pretty much dead, but also reminds us that volunteering is often welcome in Open Source.
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RTF idea : Andrew has been contemplating how Open Source can handle RTF when everyone has their pet version. He even goes so far as to propose RTFlib (that's Read The Friendly Library, no, wait, Rich Text Format library, simple mistake). There's a fairly extensive discussion on the topic that would interest most in the office development field.
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Implementing support for barbarisms correction : Jordi speaks about a subject important to people that live in any place where more than one language is commonly spoken--barbarisms. For those who don't know, barbarisms are linguistical snafu's that occur when a word enters another language with another spelling. Jordi has ideas about recognizing and correcting them. If you live where the lines of language become blurry or develop an application that is sensitive to language (say, a word processor for example), this will certainly be of interest to you.
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AbiWord 1.0.3 "Désir Satisfait" Unleashed! : Yes, I altered the table appropriately. In case you're as dense as you look, 1.0.3 is available for downloading. It's totally official; this is the one you can upgrade to (i.e. stable).
Development
CVS StatsTrack 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. Tables...ooh....
| CVS checkins 2002.09.16 - 2002.09.23 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| fjfranklin | 204 | fix UTF-8 conversion, autogen.sh framework truncated, updated instructions for nextgen.sh, Nicolas Mercier's credits added to reflect his contributions with DocBook and Coquille, C++ test for pspell, initialized variable fix (de-segfault), autoconf bug fixed, created home-made ABI_C_INLINE to replace AC_INLINE for bug fix, configure(peer config to shared macro, enable peers in peer dir) & fix build all that broke;-), peer detection, build fix for coquille plugin, build fixes and updates, and bug 3335 |
| dchart | 116 | Changelog update, Polish documentation from Andrzej Pruszynski. |
| dom | 103 | UTF8 Text exporting, UCS4 returns empty, rulers(left de-flickered, top de-bugged), dialogues(GNOME2 recommended button order) "fix insert->file and --print, map LASTAUTHOR => CONTRIBUTOR" Erp?, font preview bugs (doesn't have any, he just hallucinates them), print segv fix, macdinked a "+" icon for add word, cliboard fix, format painter fix, new menu and toolbar icons, primarily for tables, table toolbar actually does stuff!, and bug 3195 | jordimas* | 68 | Menus this and menus that and some uncommented menu work, format table stub, center window fix, meta data center property sheet, and bug 4001 |
| phearbear* | 47 | Format Table Stubs, caret work, focus issue, questioned my sanity, Japanese works again, Scooping rules (like following your dog through the park, but instead, following a UTF8 declaration), Squiggles, single unit conversion fix, UTF8 cleanup, dialogues(Font Preview, Page Numbers, Column, Paragraph, Lists, Zoom), XPM>Bitmap 256colour fix. |
| uwog | 30 | GTK2 warning fix on Table Insert, format tables begun, Nederlandse strings, en bug 3339 |
| hippietrail | 28 |
Code beautification*, removed ispell artifact and other clean ups, old global removals, moved over to Doxygen style comments
Remember, don't pollute; help keep code clean & green! |
| mpritchett | 14 | commited work from dglassey for MSVC++ independence, |
| msevior | 14 | headers&footers, format table, top ruler controls merged cells, nested tables |
| dglassey | 8 | MSVC++ independence via work with mingw32 |
| phma | 2 | strings(Vietnamese by pclouds) |
| rms | 2 | rpm config, typo&shortcut |
| mgilbert | 1 | Correction to documentation |
*jordimas: system-related work is Windows unless stated otherwise
*Code beautification: to avoid AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom, Andrew asked in advanced if this was ok.
POWs
The concept of a "Project Of the Week" is to single out tasks of major interest that outside developers might be interested in providing assistance to. Until a "best way" of listing POWs come to mind, they shall be listed in a short description. Any user interested is welcome to assist in tackling these POWs. If you know someone who's interested, you can link directly to a POW, in order, they're pow4 (at the top) through pow1 (at the bottom). Reminder to developers, I can't them if you don't submit them. Additionally, feel free to announce if one of these is finished (in case you don't mention it on the list or in the cvs)
Name: Convert Aiksaurus to GTK+2
Lone Hero: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra
Success came on: 2002.09.18 05:23, or atleast, that's when it came to my attention.
Name: Style and/or Diction Plugins (bug 3281) (do either/or or both!)
Description: build a plugin to allow Abiword to check style and diction
Advertisement: me got no grammar fixer, help mes can't you?
Recommended Outline: Create a plugin for AbiWord that allows the checking of style and diction. The source code for the gnu style and diction tools is available here: http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html
As a prototype you might be able to hack something using the AbiCmd plugin to wrap the style and diction tools. The AikSaurus (Thesaurus) plugin should also be a helpful guide.
When you get the basics working you could try to get Abiword to display green squiggle underlines to mark errors, or otherwise work on a good user interface.
Comments: A great way to start playing with the AbiSource
System: Any OS will be fine.
Challenge level: ***.. 3 stars out of 5
Current Hero: The mastery of Kung Fu has yet to appear.
Name: Fix Windows printing boogs (bug 3239)
Description: Tackle some or more of the various bugs that cause issues in attempting to print under Windows
Advertisement: ????????????????????????????? (no, that's really the ad!)
Recommended Outline: You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments: "The problem is that printing on Windows is broken with several brand of printer drivers (see dependent bugs). It appears that with standard PostScript driver it does not happen. It appears also that version 0.9.6 had less problems than 1.0.1 so we might find out where the regression is bu diffing.
"Please, be sure to read all the bug reports. Even partial fix are accepted.
"Fixes must be done against STABLE tree and possibly ported to HEAD (the later can be done as a second step)."
This comes from Hub
Notice: This may already have been fixed with the libiconv upgrade, stay tuned!
System: Windows
Challenge level: ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero: Not one MoFo yet has had the Huevos for this POW
Name: More Windows Maintainers
Description: Jordi could always use help
Advertisement: Help free people from the oppression of MSWord today!
Recommended Outline: You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments: Wouldn't be a bad idea to start with the printing bug...
System: Windows
Challenge level: ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero: Jordi Mas
Bug Update
Bug Statistics
I'm leaving the link, guys, you put it up!
Last week, we interrupted our special series of Microsoft Insider Confessionals with Gilbertian thought. This week, we continue with the most looked forward to interview of all time, the FreeBSD Daemon. For those of you who don't know, the FreeBSD Daemon began secretly working for Microsoft in the early-to-mid nineties, and in that position, he has watched the evolution of MonopolySoft's offerings.
When I caught up with him, he was playing bumper pool with the NetBSD Daemon, who was busy trying to hit on Nederlandse stewardess. After beating "that pseudo-evil little whackjob," we took a booth and enjoyed the second-hand cpu smoke. The rest is the raw, uncut interview for your pleasure.
How did you get started working for Microsoft?
I think it was back around '93 or '94; I was originally assisting this group of suit-suckers as a laid back print server, while this AS/400 got all the show.
Then, this Michael Davis guy comes up and starts asking about me.
See, the guys at MonopolySoft had already outsourced to me before, but never had the chance to meet me up in person.
Naturally, being the dip-schnitzle he is, instead of asking me,
he asks some pimple-load brown-noser who kissed up so much,
he had a ring of bathroom tissue lint that would have made the "Got Milk?" commercials look unenthusiastic about their products.
So, I call out to the jagoff, "HEY, PUNK! You can ask me or ask the dirt!"
It was obvious he'd never seen a system intelligent enough to recognize he was a jagoff.
So he comes up to me and asks the world's dumbest question, "Can you do an 'In-ter-net?'"
Anyhow, I gave him a quick education on why Ben Franklin had a fscking key on the line, and we started talking.
He said his company, MonopolySoft, also known as, "Don't steal from us; we'll steal from you,"
was in need of a server to the Internet.
Apparently the department called, "Sales, Legal and Accounting," or as I called it, "Lies, DIMMed Lies and Beancounting,"
needed a high performance system, but they couldn't cave to their biggest competitor, International Business Machines,
or what I like to refer to as, "HAL9000's Secret Stash."
So, ten minutes later, I'm packin' my bags and headin' out to Redmond, or as I like to call it, "The Land God is Just Waiting to Punish,"
and that was just before the dot-bomb era started, so, I'm like freakin' prophetic.
What did you do while you were there?
After letting the schmucks attempt to shove together a server around the twentieth time, I put together the configuration and called it home.
I had "iPlanet" thing put on which confused me, and keep in mind, the httpd programme was still in development.
I asked them, "Hey, what the heck is this? Don't you schmoes have your own server?"
Some kid whose face could have been mistaken for a certain moon of Jupiter's explained it all to me.
"We do, but we can't use it," he says, and when I asked him to explain that cryptic message, he burbled something to the effect of,
"If we wanted to reboot your machine daily, we would have just put NT on it." Naturally, I'm thinkin' What the SDRAM is NT!?
He must have been an Arab, because he had lots of spare oil when he started to explain their server package...which crashes daily.
So, I start asking myself here, "These people have a server they can't use because it crashes,
an operating system they can't use because it crashes
and a brain they can't use because their OEM, whom I believe was Packard Bell, intentionally shipped the wrong drivers to work with the FleshWare;
I gotta ask me, what's wrong here?
These people can't find their rear crevice on a 1:1 3D model of themselves; what the three stage power adapters are they doing online?"
Little did I know the worst was yet to come.
Eighty-seven acquisitions later,
I'm an oversized mail server running proprietary technology with security holes so large they could fit Larry and Harlan Ellisons' egos in just one of them.
I've seen Canadian Natural Preserves smaller than the crack-capacity of this crap.
Then, to top it all off, they ask me to host a site to help people get off of POSIX-compliant operating systems, like yours truely.
Two days later, I'm like, "Fsck this, I have better things to do," but my iron clad BSD License said I was doomed to be a poorly designed mail server.
What was the hardest thing about working at Microsoft?
I'M THE ONLY BLEEDIN' THING WORKING, THAT'S WHAT!
This crashes, that is insecure and the other is blissfully unaware something is supposed to happen!
I'm it!
I have no help, and I'm still overseen by a face being researched as a cure to America's Energy Needs and a strange bald guy that buys me beers on Fridays.
It's not like I don't ask for help, but Mr. IIS is oh so busy having to be patched, for the fourth time...THIS FSCKING HOUR!
If I don't get out of that Windows-hole soon, I'm going to pkill something.
At that point, ClipThis! came in and a small brawl began amongst the various trademarked creatures, while a stewardess and I went to Luigi's. Next week, a PR Weasle that ran for the hills after XP was released and never looked back!
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.
| Top 20 Problems | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 3269 | 120 | --- | Crashing on printing |
| 3171 | 115 | 1.0.x | rtf sets top and bottom margins to 0 |
| 3525 | 90 | --- | font incorrectly printed and spaced |
| 376 | 80 | 1.2 | File assosciate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 1406 | 61 | 1.0.x | xhtml documents fail to open: "Bogus html document" msg |
| 1747 | 42 | 1.2 | background colour of text selection is always grey |
| 1194 | 39 | 1.2 | alt+xxxx does not insert special symbols |
| 2362 | 30 | --- | AbiWord only prints across half of page |
| 3778 | 29 | --- | Hanging indent setting ignores units |
| 2868 | 25 | 1.2 | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 2421 | 20 | 1.2 | TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat...... |
| 3808 | 20 | Future | Microsoft Word .doc files may crash Abiword |
| 1394 | 17 | 1.2 | on-screen landscape actually prints portrait in Win95 |
| 3216 | 16 | 1.0.x | tabstops can't be set in second (or third) column |
| 2299 | 15 | 1.0.x | Prints incorrect margins with split page. |
| 2924 | 15 | --- | printing abw documents defaults to black pages |
| 3083 | 15 | Future | [META] Redesign smart quote system |
| 3801 | 15 | Future | Incremental loader seems to struggle with large files |
| 3579 | 14 | Future | Save corrupted when text pasted from web page and saved a...... |
| Top 20 Requests For Enhancement | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 1261 | 528 | 1.2 | Need to support footnotes and endnotes |
| 2321 | 245 | Future | [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? |
| 2183 | 229 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 1374 | 96 | Future | [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ... |
| 2365 | 90 | Future | AbiWord needs 'view codes' |
| 1950 | 87 | Future | Wish for automatic Table of Contents |
| 1144 | 67 | Future | Improve KWord import/export filters |
| 2463 | 51 | Future | support embedded objects |
| 1929 | 41 | Future | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword |
| 2565 | 41 | Future | Add true MS Word .doc export capability |
| 808 | 32 | 1.2 | Tables not imported from RTF |
| 2186 | 30 | Future | The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles |
| 3657 | 30 | Future | Rapid Document Production, Insert File |
| 2219 | 27 | Future | AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu |
| 515 | 25 | Future | columns change should only affect selected text |
| 2296 | 25 | Future | doc import: footnotes |
| 2169 | 24 | Future | Line numbering |
| 2360 | 23 | Future | Resizing bitmap images |
| 3419 | 20 | Future | [RFE] Add microspacing feature (tracking) for characters |
Verified Bugs
| Bugs Verified This Week | |
| Bug ID | Description |
| 2158 | (windows) squiggles don't vanish completely after correct... |
| 3329 | Spelling underlines linger after correction |
| 3523 | AikSaurus messes up dialog icons |
| 3523 | Won't run at all |
| 3583 | Abi fails to import WordPerfect superscripts and subscripts |
| 3584 | Encoding dialog input focus should be list, not OK button |
| 3664 | incorrect line breaks line feeds in installer Gnu Public ... |
| This Week's Most Active QA Helpers: | |||
| Verified | Name | ||
| 6 | Daniel Jensen | ||
| 1 | Mark Gilbert | ||
| OS | CPU | URL | Comment |
| AbiWord Snapshots | |||
| Linux (GNOME+GTK) | i386 | http://pino.frontisterion.nl/uwog/abiword/ | Provided by Marc Maurer, aka WonderBoy! These are updated daily. Plugins, clip art, fonts and help files are available too. |
| Linux (GTK) | i386 | http://24.98.8.129:3000/abiword-current.tar.gz | Mark Gilbert's GCC3 tinderbox builds. Do not require libstdc++-libc6.2 |
| Win32 | i386 | http://abiword.pchasm.org/ | Provided by Jeremy Davis. These are updated twice a day. Plugins are available too. |
| Win32 | i386 | http://www.niksbiks.dk/Software/Abi/ | Provided by Nikolaj Brandt Jensen. These are updated about once a week. BiDi builds are available too. |
Special Interest --
From time to time, this section will contain essay-style text about various special interests of the AbiWord development.
SPECIAL NOTICE: If you're working on a project that is related to, affects the development of or is affected by AbiWord, feel free to contact me
| Help promote AbiWord development by donating money. The money go to a general AbiWord "fund", presently hosted by Dom Lachowicz (cinamod@hotmail.com). | |
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