AbiWord Weekly News #162

AbiWord Weekly News #162, (2003, week 36, released 2003.09.21)

Welcome to this issue 162 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

Follow-ups:

I'm still here.

This week in development

Tree-Branching, localisation and the first new feature of 2.2.

Request for User Assitance

If you, or someone you know, could assist in the following languages, it would be greatly appreciated:

Afrikaans[af-ZA]
Assamese[as-IN]
Corsican[co-FR]
Esperanto[eo]
Estonian[et]
Farsi[fa-IR]
Frisian[fy-NL]
Hausa (Niger)[ha-NE]
Hausa (Nigeria)[ha-NG]
Hindi[hi-IN]
Croatian[hr]
Armenian[hy-AM]
Icelandic[is-IS]
Georgian[ka-GE]
Korean[ko-KR]
Cornish[kw-GB]
Marshallese (Nauru)[mh-NR]
Macedonian[mk]
Flemish (Belgium)[nl-BE]
Occitan[oc-FR]
Thai[th-TH]
Urdu[ur-PK]
Chinese (Singapore)[zh-SG]

If you can help, please contact either Jordi Mas or Pierre Abbat.

Silliness of the Week

It's true, High Times uses only real weed on the covers....

This Issue

And remember, I give you an email address so you can talk to me, in case you're not on either mailing list.

In this issue:

Discussion
Development
Bug Update
Release HackDown
Abi's Relatives

Editor(s) of this issue: E. A. Zen

If you're interested in using AbiWord for the first time, receiving a more up-to-date version, any particular version or special release, feel free to visit the new Latest Releases page.

DISCLAIMER: It should be generally noted that anything said before the "In this issue:" line is purely editorial. Actually, everything I say is purely editorial. You kind of get used to it.

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:

commit: MinGW/cygwin tools plugin work : For you starving Windows users, Jeremy scripted all that was necessary to get Abi's tools to build in MinGW and CygWin. Some additional work will be necessary for others using the setup, ymmv and all that.
Informative: A very good article about localizing to Malay language and
Two words for "column" : You don't know a problem until you have to deal with it in more than one language. There was a great I Love Lucy scene based on that subject; I think they were in Paris. Anyhow, in Informative:..., Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan sends us a link to the article One Asia, Many Bahasa? It gives the reader an idea of some of the problems that can build up when you let Euro-trash decide what a standard should be on an international scale. You can ask Andrew about localisation headaches if you buy him a beer, or if it's a month with a full moon in it.
In Two words..., Pierre shares his headache on the English simplification of the concept of a column. As far as I know, he's still waiting to find out which columns are which, how Escher.
ATTN: Tree branched : Users of the AnonCVS (click just because you're curious) who want the new stable branch of 2.0 should be pointing to ABI-2-0-0-STABLE at this time. This means Dom will begin clear cutting the forest of stability and buildability of HEAD. Meantime, the current stable maintainer has been kept secret, possibly because he is loser.
Arabic Lang shaping in AbiWord 2.0 : Isam Bayazidi offers to fix the glyph shaping engine in assistance for the arabic language. This would be a great time to remind Arabic readers that we could really use arabic translators. Meantime, Hub has been self nominated for stable maintainer. My previous remark was made under the impression that Mark was going to be involved. I've learned that mentioning Mark in an unrelated capacity results in an increased probability of feedback on the AWN. Granted, much of the feedback is Mark informing me that calling him a loser is unprofessional, and granted, I'm not a professional, but, occasionally, stuff about the AWN's actual content also gets commented on.
Re: [GTKMathView] ANN: gtkmathview 0.5.1, gtkmathview-bonobo 0.0.1 : Math in AbiWord gets more realistic everyday. Martin forwards important information about GTKMathView. It's first Bonobo project has been release, v0.0.1. When the time comes, it, too, may be an Abi Relative ^_^
Re: FYI: KOffice will switch to OpenOffice.org file format : Like unDecomposerRayed corpses in Plan 9 from Outer Space, this fun little topic just doesn't die. Marco Fioretti, in relation to an article that might actually get published soon, has several points he'd like to emphasize. The major issue with OASIS in general is that everyone who supports it also supports their own version of it; perhaps you may have noticed that the RFE in the bugzilla specifies "StarOffice format?" The biggest problem for AbiWord is not that we can't or won't, as the project has already begun and, indeed, has functionality, but that coder power divided by time available amounts to a value frighteningly low. In plain Engrish, that means we need more people to help bring it to fruition. In unplain Engrish, "Blame the Dutch."
AWN161 : I have received a memo that 1.0.7 lives in itsown world and will nolonger be supported. I also reported that, but I was resent the memo. Also, my sympathies go out to Robert G. Werner's parents for the creation of Robert G. Werner. Apparently, I, or part of me, or an ex-part of me, may have insulted his mother, or part of her, or future part of her when I was a single year of age. Finally, Stephen would like to make sure that the Latvian translation you saw in awn-161 was done by Gustavs. Additonally, so, even more finally, users can only send non-html email to the list.
ATTN: intend to switch to the enchant spell checking engine : Head will be switched over, eventually, to exclusive use of Enchant. Some of us assumed that eons ago, but, hey, announce it anyways. Possible library dependencies have yet to be broken, and Windows has a whole world of issues just waiting for it, but Dom is not anything if not flexible (possibly in a kinky way)*, the time will come.
commit: Instant Zoom for AbiWord! : Martin commits the first new feature for 2.2, InstaZoom™! Adjust document zoom levels so fast, your head, not your CPU, will spin out of control! Hub exercises his self-proclaimed power to declare that no new features (like this really nice one) will be backported to 2.0 (even if the framework is already there). This is also where rumour mongering begins, like, what kind of repressed feelings the developers possess about one another (think "Jay and Silent Bob") and how many David Charts are there really?

Traffic on the user mailing list is sporadic at best. Often, a good topic comes up, but users tend to only respond to the original poster rather than the list (as well), which limits what I would add, as the only lone threads I post are announcements of importance or points of great interest, e.g. solutions to problems in a preceeding thread.. This week, interesting topics on the user list included:

Russian info : THANKS : Last week, I appeared to have missed this one. For people looking to get their AbiWord running with a different language, Jeff Steele delivers, after much discussion, a two part solution. First is to install the appropriate aspell dictionaries, the second is to make sure you have appropriate fonts installed. Read the post for specific examples.
default saving options? : Pat Riehecky would like to know how to change the default file format for when saving a document. The age old solution seems to work even in the modern AbiWord (though, it might be possible in the gui as well), and that is to change the line DefaultSaveFormat="." in your AbiWord.Profile file.
Spanish dictionari : Similar to Arabic Lang shaping in AbiWord 2.0, Félix encounters all sorts of bad fun in español. Characters here are also becoming horribly mangled during their creation. While Isam Bayazidi might fix this in the future, Shad Van Den Hul, who is "Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life" mind you, has offered the work around of using the insert symbol option (shortcut CTRL+M ). I love this whole idea of users helping users.
Abiword 2.0 interface problem : During the 2.0 discussions in several places (Gnome Office 1.0 general announcement), I was asked where it was documented that KDE users will need the gnome-sessions-daemon running, or something to that effect. Well, once again...here it is, the gnome-sessions-daemon bug that affects KDE AbiUsers. You may want to add it to your start folder, and if you do not have it, James suggests getting the latest and greatest from www.usr-local-bin.org.
Where did 1.0.7 go : Remember the memo I got from Mark? Andy Hanton, people with 2.0 problems and Gnome 1.x users are wondering "Where have all the one-oh-sevens gone?" Peter, Paul and Mary don't know, but Mark (at least with links in his reply), has returned them for the time being. And Mark thought I was a loony.

*(possibly in a kinky way): This reminds me of how Randall's cousin died. It was terribly embarrassing, you see. He died of a broken neck...while trying to give himself head. He made it though. Balls on lips and everything. Kevin didn't bother with information as to whether the breaking occurred right away or during the glorious hip thrusting. There will have to be another movie to clarify that. Stash Bash rocks.

Development

CVS Stats

Track 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 2003.09.14 - 2003.09.21
Who	Commits	In summary
David Chart	3-ish	Documentation on translating AbiWord from Raphael Finkel
Dom "The DeVirginizer" Lachowicz	>3	sync with OOo cvs myspell, fix crash bug for joshk, remove some other gtk deprecated stuff, more deprecated gtk+ stuff, fix more gtk deprecated stuff (anyone else sensing a theme?), buy us some time before deprecation, Fix build, image alt/title start, hook up image title and alternate text Buggies: 5291, 5385, 5473, 5677, 5678, 5679, 5707, 5768, 5806
E. A. Zen	0	I was going to add this huge automatic table of contents thing but...no, no I wasn't, you got me, you got the tater.
Frank Franklin	some	discard all extensions from data ID when forming subsidiary filename in XHTML export, change scripts to generate .html directly instead of via .xhtml, add XHTML template instruction to insert document creator property Lone Complete Bug: 5779
Andrew Dunbar	4	Fix Egmont Koblinger's name, Estonian support added by Marek Laane
Hub Figuiere	mo'a	Dialog lists that works, Implement a hook to look for Zpaf Dingbats when asked for Dingbats, remove lot of dead code, Fix breakage, Foundations to Fix bug 5795
KJD	a freakin' lot	update NSIS v2 installer script to build with latest NSIS 2beta, a few glitches fixed, "stuff" (yup, thought that myself), other stuff and more stuff, rename nsi file for easier integration with Makefile and NSIS 1 branch, update Makefile for NSIS v2 branch, fix bug noticed by Kichik, some simplification (wouldn't that be "stuff?"), some more simplification and splitting into multiple files
Mark Evil Gilbert	like 7	Revert Win32 graphics crapola, Fix misdrawing of the plugin list box, Fix sys-wv detection
Martin Sevior	"buttload"	Blank cells in tables get the properties their set, Fix blank lines in tables changing as requested, Fix drawing lines in slected nested cells, Fix crash pasting into headers/footers, Implement Tomas Frydich's suggestion for windows graphics class, Instant zoom for AbiWord!
Pierre Abbat	3, I think	Updated Russian translation by Nikolai Shmirev (interestingly, the email doesn't match the CVS log, and the CVS log seems to mention Lojban)
row	2	What is a row?, use strcasecmp if available
Marc Maurer	3	Update the wikipedia search URL Buggies: 5780 and 5802
Will Lachance	Lucky 1	Lone Super Bug: 4878

POWs

Coming back Real Soon Now™.

Bug Update

Bug Market

I am NOT doing this stuff by hand! You people ain't payin' me enough. In fact, you ain't payin' me!

Release HackDown

To return eventually! In the meantime, Dom has a thingy for 2.2.

Abi's Relatives

I had hoped to actually receive news by, oh, I don't know, people actually keeping pages uptodate or emailing me or starting their own newsletters. Bastards.

Libraries

AbiWord uses several libraries, and other sub-applications, to give it that extra bit of polish. Here, you will learn whatever news I scrape together or has been sent to me in relation to them. I wanted to do more this week, but not so much.

Open Text Summariser

Nothing new, but cross fingers!

LibWPD

Total nada.

WvWare

I went to his advogato page. I went to his Freshmeat page. Dom doesn't do news. In fact, Freshmeat is blissfully unaware that this went 1.0.0.

Enchant

There was a GTKSpell fix from Torstein Sunde, and Dom committed a MySpell update. No actual news, just some stuff I saw in the mailing list.

Applications

AbiWord is crucial to the use of or coordinates with a number of full blown applications. Ok, I only know of, like, two. Well, there was that screen play thing, but that went straight out the window. And there was AbiMoz, but some other application has taken its place. I'm sure, once AbiWord 2.0 is seen to all, there will be more to see. Screw the Ant, it's AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom!!!

GNOME Office Suite

Since I don't know of applications outside of AbiWord that use AbiWord, I'll be doing this Gnome Office business. These people should have newsletters, so, I can steal crap from them.

Gnumeric

Jody, unlike Dom, actually keeps blogs, news and other bits uptodate and informed. The future of gnumeric is quite interesting. First, there is planned to be a libgnumeric. Once Abi has the new bonobo bits in place, this will SO be there. Second, implicit iteration for operators shall actually be completed, swear to Bob. Then, there's the XL export for charts to look forward to, the Conditional Formats to anticipate, the Pivot Tables which will surely rock, and after that, there's the future power of Scripting, Accessibility and, for those of you that know what this means, finally making the jump to using the SAX parsers by default. Good luck to the Gnumeric folks, and may your future shared charting library rock!

Gnome-DB

The newest thing from this week was discussion about Mergeant, specifically making it usable as part of the Gnome Office. With that focus in mind, Rodrigo has begun work on improving the interface. There are rumours of screenshots to be available once it's worth a peek!

Criawips

In search of "What's the buzz; hey, what's a happening," I found an important quote from Sven, "I still plan to work on criawips a GNOME presentation program, but this is ATM less important than gnome-de.org and gnoppix are." The referred to comment comes from the GNOME mail archives, specifically, Application received from Sven Herzberg.

Other

Look, a place to talk about the AWN

Abiword Weekly News

If you don't know what great fun is happening this week, tough! Joisey rocks! Anyhow, I'll be up until mid-week, but the next AWN will be back to normal. Meantime, rent Clerks and send compliments to me ;o)

Latest Releases

I'll do this on the trip back. By then, for all I know, it'll be 2.0.1, which means Windows will be back in the game. I look forward to see how things will work out once I've scrapped the old tables ^_^

Open Source, Open Books.

Last Updated: April 10, 2003

Approximately once a month, don't hedge bets, I'll get this updated by asking (read: whining at) dom. In the meantime, whenever you want to see how much is in and where it gets diverted, just peek down here.

Word of caution, numbers lightly fudged due to (hopefully) temporarily incomplete data. Like a consultant's suggested price, you'll find hidden meaning in the data if you stare long and hard. Surgeon's General's Warning: Staring long and hard may have psychotropic affects; keep out of reach of people who like that sort of thing.

I cannot promise the time of de-fudging, nor can I promise there will be de-fudging any time soon. However, I feel confident that there will be some de-fudging going on.

Current Balance: $1604.34
Interest earned: $8.64

Expenditures: $950
$400 to pay for Martin's Boston Gnome Summit Trip
$400 to buy Andrew Dunbar a new computer
$ 60 to misc./entertainment expenses at GNOME summit, GUAD3C, other, paid out of dom's pocket
$225 Patch Prize (those already successfully awarded)
- $ 45 Will Lachance
- $ 45 Marc Maurer
- $ 45 Ruud Vring
- $ 45 Patrick Lam
- $ 45 Dom Lachowicz

Unique contributors: 58*
paypal: 57
check : 3
cash : 1
*58: plusse 3 repeat offenders whom we love dearly

Contributions: $2723.00
Less paypal and other banking fees: $115.00

PLEASE! Help promote AbiWord development by donating money. The money go to a general AbiWord "fund", presently hosted by Dom Lachowicz (cinamod@hotmail.com).

In order to donate money, you must have a PayPal account. If you do not already have one, the links above will allow you to open one. Please consider putting cinamod@hotmail.com in the "Referral ID" field, which results in a one-time $5 donation from PayPal to AbiWord development if you verify your account. Note that only donations of $3 or more are of interest. Sorry, this is due to the fees imposed by credit card companies and PayPal.