AbiWord Weekly News #48, (2001, week 24, released 2001.06.17)

Welcome to issue 48 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

This week development picked up again and 35 fixed bugs are pending QA. Seems people are really intending on making this upcoming release (0.9.0) a good one. Dom posted a TODO list and I suspect we'll see a lot of stuff on it fixed next week.

Also, the abiword-docs gang are getting top quality feedback and bugs they file have a short life expectancy. As it should be, too :) They are producing good stuff, and I hope we'll be able to make it available in the not too distant future. Maybe a first release for 0.9.0?

In this issue:

• CVS Stats
• Project of the Week
• Bug Update
• On the Mailing List

Editor(s) of this issue: Jesper Skov

CVS Stats

Patch of the week goes to three people because I can't decide which set of patches I like best: Martin has made some good work on the background painting architecture which has really improved performance and finish. Dom bit the bullet and improved the ispell support; even though we all hate it, it's still the only spell checker available on Windows. Finally, Frodo Looijaard finished off the work Sam started on the autoconf/make system - I guess (and hope!) this should make it possible for all to use.

Project Of the Week

POW (Project Of the Week) and the new uPOW (User Project Of the Week) is an attempt at attracting new developers and entice help from users by lowering the bar of entry to doing something constructive for AbiWord. A POW will describe a goal and often outline how to get there.

Presently we have a few unclaimed POWs. Please see the POW status page for more details.

Bug Update

Here's the AbiWord bug update for the last week. If you can spare some time, please help us triage the bugs - you don't need to be able to program to do this.

Bug Counts

These are the bug counts for the past 4 weeks:

Date:        Submitted:    QA:           Open:
----------------------------------------------------
2001.05.25   55 ( +10%)     89 ( +53%)   287 (  -6%)
2001.06.01   57 (  +3%)     91 (  +2%)   287 (  +0%)
2001.06.08   61 (  +7%)    101 ( +10%)   308 (  +7%)
2001.06.15   67 (  -1%)    136 (  +3%)   301 (  +0%)

Bug Votes

As a user of AbiWord, you are able to vote on bugs you'd like to see closed. The process is quite simple:

1. Create yourself an account if you don't already have one.

2. Bring up the bug list.

3. Click on Bug IDs to read bug details.

4. If you find an interesting bug you'd like to have fixed, cast your vote by clicking on the "Vote for this bug" link on the bug description page.

You have 30 voting points you can cast in whatever proportions you'd like on anything between 1 and 30 bugs. But note that developers will likely prioritize a bug with 30 single votes than a bug with a single 30-unit vote. So vote with lower unit counts (5 or so) to make your voice heard!

From the sorted list of votes, we found the current Top 10 Bugs to be:

Target Milestones

We have just started nominating bugs for the next two big releases. You, developer and user, can have your say on which bugs to nominate by casting your vote on bugs as described above. The current milestone distribution is as follows:

Closed Bugs

In the past week, the following 15 bugs have been closed (i.e., closed and verified fixed):

On the Mailing List

Traffic on the developer mailing list has picked up a little this week compared to the two previous weeks.

This week, interesting topics included:

1. Abiword used as Word replacement: We all felt pretty good about this article. Hopefully the students at Trinity College will help us make AbiWord better, either by contributing code and fixes, or by making sure bugs are filed on problems they find. Like all the rest of our users (and lurkers) do, right? Right? :)

2. Status of autoconf framework: Frodo was pretty active most of the week, improving the autoconf/make framework piece by piece. Very nice!

3. Ispell: Dom fixed ispell support. And there was much rejoicing (among Windows users anyway).

4. TODO Before the release: Dom posted a list of stuff that needs to be done before the 0.9.0 release. Resulted in quite a thread.