AbiWord Weekly News #59, (2001, week 35, released 2001.09.25)

Welcome to issue 59 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

Much stuff happened this week: new style features, improved WP import, TinderBox back to life, file->close discussion brought to an end by a patch, and request for help to make releases. Read all about it...

Note that Top 10 Bugs and Milestone Bugs are from 2001.09.25, not week 35.

Seeing as we're now in the 0.9.x cycle, I'd like to (yet again) ask people (users, developers, lurkers - the whole shebang) to go to the bug list in BugZilla and cast your votes for bugs you'd like to see fixed. The present list of priorities has not really changed for a long time (other than the bugs on it that have been nailed recently). This is your chance to voice your (personal) direction of the bug fixing effort! See below for details...

In this issue:

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

Editor(s) of this issue: Jesper Skov

CVS Stats

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:
----------------------------------------------------
2001.08.10  107 ( +22%)    133 ( +12%)   311 (  -1%)
2001.08.17  112 (  +4%)    119 ( -10%)   329 (  +5%)
2001.08.24   94 ( -16%)    125 (  +5%)   363 ( +10%)
2001.08.31   94 (  +0%)    158 ( +26%)   354 (  -2%)

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

Note that there are many many bugs just waiting for QA before they can be closed. Please help!

In the past week, the following 1 bugs have been closed (i.e., closed and verified fixed):

1647,

On the Mailing List

Traffic on the developer mailing list has settled on about 200 postings per week.

You may also find interesting threads on the user and documentation lists (unfortunately the archive for the latter is broken at the moment).

This week, interesting topics on the developer list included:

1. First try on dictionary rpm-spec: Gabriel Gerhardsson started making dictionary packages and later followed up with "Testbuilds of all dictionaries available". Not bad!

2. Abiword [Grocery Store] Marketing Project: Tim Schmidt wants to see AbiWord on cheap CDs in grocery stores. Can't really blame him.

3. POW: speed up bulk spell checking: Ben Mesman offered to take on the spell checking performace improvement POW (and appears to be allowed to do so in business hours - how cool is that?). I believe we now have blindingly fast spell checking (but I think it involved some help from Dom and others).

4. Changing Built-in Styles: David asked for the ability to change builtin styles. And Martin fixed it.

5. PATCH: WordPerfect Stuff: William Lachance announced a much improved WP importer.

6. Tinderbox update: Sam asked for people to host AbiWord TinderBox builds. If you have a fast internet connection and leave your box on at night, please contact the list.

7. Commit: The end to the file->close debate: Dom's put an end to the debate.

8. XDarwin binary available for testing: F J Franklin announced availability of binaries for Darwin/X.

9. HELP WANTED -- release team for AbiWord: Paul got around to write detailed requirements for release engineering. In the same series are: release packagers for AbiWord, release testers for AbiWord, and release writers for AbiWord.