I get a lot of questions about bugs and feature requests; and a large proportion of it is on a few common topics, and receives the same set of replies. The theory is that this page should answer those questions, rendering many of them unnecessary, and leaving me more time to do constructive things. So, before you ask me anything, please read this.
Bugzilla is a wonderful bug tracking database. More information about our bugzilla, bug policy, and your support expectations can be found at the following sites. Read these before you continue.
http://www.abisource.com/contribute/bugtracking/
http://www.abisource.com/twiki/bin/view/Abiword/FaqBugPolicy
http://www.abisource.com/support/expectations.phtml
Yes, it still does. You can contact me after you've filed the bug in bugzilla, though.
Well yes, but only in the abstract sense. I still don't want to hear about it. File the bug in bugzilla. If you know me personally, see the above comment. If not, wait patiently for activity in bugzilla. It'll send you emails when some aspect of your bug changes, so you will always be kept informed.
Yes. We're not monkeys paid to crawl the web searching for anyplace you might've filed a bug. If you are interested in having the bug fixed, you will have to file it in the appropriate place. If you're lucky, one of our volunteers might have done this for you, but don't expect it. This sort of thing happens extremely infrequently. File bugs in the correct place or don't bother to file them at all.
Not intentionally. We can't close a bug filed on a webpage, assign it a milestone or developer, track progress, or really ask for more information from you there. See the above comment about our not being web-monkeys.
The bug policy is an important thing to follow. It is a protocol carefully designed to get your bugs fixed at minimum of hassle to both yourself and the developers who might actually fix your bug. Bugs filed in bugzilla can be tracked, closed, queried for more information, targeted for a particular milestone, etc... Anything else will be considered random noise.
No, not unless I specifically asked for it in my comment, and in my many years of hacking, I don't think I've ever done that. Random emails don't get logged, so we can't see your happiness at my having fixed your problem, or your irateness at something I did/wrote. Even if you think I'm an [insert derogative noun from above], file it in bugzilla along with your reasoning. No one will think less of you for this. I'll probably even have more respect for you because of it. This will help your bug get addressed. Sending me emails will only make me mad, and give me all the justification I need to close your bug and .killfile you.
No.
No.
Great! Please read the bug writing guidelines (http://bugzilla.abisource.com/bugwritinghelp.html) and read this page (http://www.abisource.com/support/bugs/). After that, please go to http://bugzilla.abisource.com/, create an account, and file your bug!
This page is not supposed to be an unfriendly one; if you do mail me on one of the above topics, I'm not going to bite your head off. Well, maybe I will. But I'd much rather spend my time hacking than sending emails to people explaining the same things again and again, and people would rather find out what they want to know instantly than wait for me to reply to their mail.
Best of luck.
Dom Lachowicz <cinamod@hotmail.com | http://www.abisource.com/~dom>
(much thanks to Gerv <gerv@gerv.net>)