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AbiWord Weekly News #142, (2003, week 18, released 2003.05.04)
Welcome to this issue 142 of the AbiWord Weekly News.
Follow-ups:
Last week was the beginning of Release Early - Release Often!
This week in development
Is GNOME Office planning a sneak attack on Windows? An Open Forum can never be called sneaky, so, no. Win32 printing bugs have a potential fix...if someone could actually get to them.
We get some updated information about the State of Bidi from the Executor and Chief of Bidi for Abiword, Tomas Frydrych. At the same time, the Mail Merge plugin is officially reaches full functionalilty, while the Open Text Summarization tool makes its big debut in Abiword's CVS. Speaking of premiers in the CVS, we now have THREE tutorials for the first time Abiword user, thanks to a technical writing course and too many people lacking communications skills and tutorials for their MUAs (that's a joke, but it will make sense to you in a bit).
By the way, 1.9.1 is coming out, today.
Request for user assistance
Windows users, your help is doubly requested*. We would like to see more bug reports coming from the Windows crowd, so, if you're feeling more daring, please download and try out the Win32 binaries when they're available. If you want some sweet functionality in AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom, you will have to participate. You could also consider joining Project Blue Ant.
Like those dedicated and good-hearted people on American Public Television, we would like to ask for a financial donation. We would like to pull out an extra $400 minimum for a "dedicated 19" 2U rack server, 2.4Ghz P4 (533 FSB) on a 100 Mbit full duplex connection. That should fix all the speed issues for us European guys (and maybe it's even faster for you en_US guys)." This was discussed in chat, and was never cleared for me to actually mention it in AWN, but, technically, it wasn't not cleared, either. Under any circumstance, the money would certainly go to a good cause, and if we raise $13 Million USD, we could buy Microsoft's Corel stock.
Silliness of the Week
Phase I of the revamp complete. I would like to introduce you to the Bug Market; it's like the stock market...for geeks. To get an understanding of the graph, please read this week's rarely appearing feature, "Special Interest.
The new support icon has been removed for now from the AWN, as the creator may wish their use to be discontinued.
Want to stop unjust things from happening in chat? Join! It's #abiword at irc.gimp.org
*requested: Danger, a recent incident suggests that this may cause anxiety, anger and/or mood shifts. Windows users not taking MAOI's should have some level of alcohol within their bloodstream.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:
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.
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:
-
Re: Return: uPOW 2001.17 - Where to send AbiWord announcements : BeOS developers interested in the continuation of Abiword for you platform, take note. If, by the release of AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom, no further development has taken place on the BeOS port, it will most likely be discontinued. It is not to say that we expect anyone to actually manage to bring it up to 2.0 in time, but we do expect a sincere commitment to it by that time, or it'll be taken from the development tree.
-
commit: color highlighting enhancements : Jordi's added some enhancements to the colour highlighter-text-colourly-highlighty...oh, heck, this thing! On top of the drop down, it also includes last used memory, common and select colours, all standard, really, but now you have, thanks to the valiant efforts of a lone Win32 developer, who loves his platform very much ^_^
-
Help with pixel dirt , commit: getting rid of pixel dirt under win32 and commit: more pixel dirty fixes : These threads included just to let Win32 users know that work on pixel dirt, stuff like this, is being made. You really shouldn't have to put up with it....
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For mingw developers ...[Fwd: Win32 GNOME 2 Patches] : By the sound of things, it looks like there's some interest in porting all of GNOME Office out of GNOME. There's one major blockade to that goal, but the time may come someday soon.
-
state of bidi Re: state of bidi State of Bidi Addendum (tables and footnotes) Commit: Tomas' Bidi fix, redone : Tomas gives us a major update on the state of the BiDirectional text capabilities of Abiword in the pre-2.0 world. To sum up many of the bits you'll find: Stable's bidi is permanently broken; Head is developing nicely; Unicode could be improved, document formats need to be updated and handled properly in import and export, Tables need to function in step with the bidi settings, and Footnotes need to be properly updated. Also, more people willing to test the 1.9.x and future 2.0RCx are very much so in demand. Feel brave? Write in a language that has no vowels? Give it a go!
-
Barbarism files and Re: Barbarism files : The official work on the Barbarism sub-dictionaries has come to head with the initial format committed by Andrew. Users of Mexican Spanish and various English-es... are welcome to look at them and probably add them on the way.
-
commit: abi & wv: alas, poor word; I knew it, Horatio : I thought I knew it well! I'm sure Frank knows what he's doing. I'm sure Frank knows he's not a fish ;o) The fake .doc export is no longer in service. Welcome to the Wild Side. I hope no one gets sued under the DMCA ;o)
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[ed. No subject] , AbiWord Tutorial Available , Re: AbiWord Tutorial Available , [ed. No subject] , Abiword Tutorial [Re: your mail] , Thank you for your class' AbiWord tutorial project , Abi Tutorial , ABI Word Tutorial and Fwd: Re: Thank you for your class' AbiWord tutorial project : How many times do you need to know there's a tutorial available? I guess it depends on how many tutorials there are. Que? "Why?" you might ask. It was a class project. More information available here. They've been cleaned up and committed (as far as I know). Frames and CSS versions available. I'm sure many people will greatly appreciate this effort.
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ATTN: Intend to release 1.9.1 on Sunday : Release Early! Release Often! Dom's quite content with your bug filings and the problems with Win32 keyboard is a major topic for future release. If all goes well, the release will be ready by Sunday evening and Latest Releases will be updated on Monday evening.
-
Win32 printing : On again, off again, looking for someone to do some Win32 work on this one. The means of fixing the Win32 printing bugs is now most likely know; however, we need someone to do the actual work!
-
Announce: The Open Text Summarizer : Nadav Rotem has created an incredible utility-- the Open Text Summarizer tool (Ots). What can Ots do for you!? It can...
- Output the summary as text
- Output the summary+original text as color-coded HTML
- Output only the keywords and their summaries
- Output a short summary of the n highest ranked terms
Now available in static and dynamic libraries with stdio interface and comes in Hebrew and English! Get yours today! I have no idea where....
-
Commit: mail merge works : Currently for Unix and the three aforementioned forms of data, the Mail Merge plugin official works. Look forward to the porting process in the weeks to come.
-
Fwd: Nyorp IP changes coming : The network at SourceGear is getting a bit of a reconfiguration. Expect the site to be down for a couple of hours on Friday (3pm-5pm CDT). If you can't it sometime after, and really need to get there, here's the pertinent information:
- ip address: 137.48.71.38
- netmask: 255.255.254.0
- gateway: 137.48.71.254
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. This week, interesting topics on the user list included:
-
installation: PKG_CONFIG_PATH and fribidi : RH9 users with fribidi! You should be aware of the useful tip that Frank has to offer! This will save you headaches later!
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 2003.04.27 - 2003.05.03 | ||
| Who | Commits | In summary |
| David Chart | 204 |
Brought the 1.9.1 Changeloge upto date as of 18:14 BST 3 May 2003. Tutorials: Bill Kaser, Courtney Linn, and Tina Worth; Nathan Jacobs, Craig Medvetz, and Rachel Perry. |
| Nadav Rotem | 91 | Open Text Summarizer |
| Dom Lachowicz | 90 |
fix the build, remold tomas' bidi fix, mail merge works! OTS: remove c++ comments, add a manpage, update documentation, add a spec file, remove libtool in favor of ltmain.sh, start of gtk-doc documentation system, add various .cvsignore files to reduce verbosity on auto-generated files, bump version number configure.in, remove c++ isms, use g_new with g_free, remove c++ comment in grader, Makefile.in: auto-generated files don't belong in cvs, Makefile.am: add popt support configure.in: add popt support, print a blurb after running configure, define VERSION properly, src/Makefile.am: popt support, define VERSION properly, src/grader.c: rearrange some fns so that they're all declared in the correct order, src/html.c: reorder the stream and OtsSentence arguments so that they're correct, src/libots.h: s/ots_parse_stdin/ots_parse_file, src/ots.c: Add popt support, src/parser.c: s/ots_parse_stdin/ots_parse_file, update documentation to include the new options and also the short option names, remove --text as it should be an unspecified default, remove --text from documentation, remove % sign from --ratio documentation, strictly enforce lower and upper bound on ratio, gnu-indent the files, plug various memory leaks, more code cleanliness, make ots_parse_file use ots_parse_stream, notable regressions in ots_parse_stream, memory leaks, unitialized variables, etc... [ed. that's really the last word of the last related commit] |
| Frank J. Franklin | 86 |
add a new constructor for Aiksaurus which takes paths of data files, add DocBook xml script from Soren Roug,
associated build updates, bury wv exporter in a shallow grave out in the back yard (rest in peace),
consign dom's weekend project to the grave. Cocoa/Aiksaurus: remove some files from core that don't belong there, don't require config.h presense, add outline for Cocoa front-end using ProjectBuilder, some interface work, word lookup--but no results yet, implementation of simpler interface bits, lookup works, but results are not yet displayed, changes to API - it's simpler now -- history works nicely -- still no results, inching closer to results, no need for additional class as data source, use AiksaurusCocoa, yay! some results, but quelle mess! buggy buggy buggy, add arrows to back/forward buttons, fixed weird bugginess by replacing << 2 by * 4, go figure, historyBack/Forward call lookupWord now rather than changing m_position |
| Hubert Figuiere | 61 |
const madness. was breaking on gcc 2.95, build Font Chooser dialog (project builder), new project builder files, Cocoa: new Font Chooser dialog, improved TableUtils and Dialog Utils, build font chooser dialog as well, color picking works, language dialog, encoding dialog, Window More dialog [ed. All the developers misspell the word dialogue, and many also misspell colour.], MessageBox gets much simplier: NSAlertPanel, sort font names, show selection in list, large "dialog options" imporvements: popup are filled and option correctly fetched, removal of GTK code that I forgot, MetaData dialog now works fine, break dialog that now works Bugs: 3277 and 4996 |
| Tomas Frydrych | 59 |
replaced "" with DO_NOT_USE memonics on certain keyboard bindings that must remain free,
added new method appendStruxFmt(), import/export of paragraph direction into Unicode text files,
bidi footnote layout, bidi preferences, footnote work, bidi stuff [ed. actual quote], workaround for iconv bug,
bidi work, work on bidi rtf export, import hyperlinks Bugs: 4125 and 5027 |
| Martin Sevior | 31 |
list bullets get imported correctly, MS Word lists have much better indentation, fixes for big tables broken across many pages,
if freetype worked for Dingbats the way it works for Symbols this commit would allow us to view Dingbat glyphs,
Insert Symbol works on unix again Bugs: 4180, 4738, 4941, 4991 and 5001 |
| Jordi Mas* | 13 |
color highlighting enhancements, removes dead code, fix graphics for win32, new Catalan barbarism file,
more pixel dirt fixes, build fix, ctrl keybinding fix Bugs: 4808, 4948 and 4993 |
| Andrew Dunbar | 11 | spelling code cleanup, fixed some horrible formatting/tabulation etc, changed a couple of variable names, fixed a few typos/spellos™, Barbarism files for Spanish Catalan, Australian English, and Mexican Spanish, Norwegian Nynorsk localisation update from Karl Ove Hufthammer |
| Marc Maurer | 7 |
nl-NL updates Bugs: 3246 and 4984 from Marc Oude Kotte |
| Rui Miguel Silva Seabra | 5 | RPM Spec: build '--with libwpd', add Require flags for plugins-impexp if libwpd is compiled, fine tunning of ots.spec.in |
| Pierre Abbat | 1 | French update by Gilles Saint-Denis |
*Jordi Mas: system-related work is Win32 unless stated otherwise.
Weekly Prize Patch
Dom, with the help of all those of you who donated to help keep AbiWord great, re-established the Weekly Prize Patch. Established at $45 pre-charges (read: the financial companies cut), the prize is awarded by the decision of Martin and Dom, both of whom must agree on the winner. Though neither Dom nor Martin may vote for themselves, they posses to "trumps" that allow them to vote for the other, therefore nullifying that other's vote. Most importantly, winning is entirely dependent on how lagered-up Martin and Dom are at the time in question.
No One
No one received the Patch Prize between the twenty-seventh of April and the third of May.
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 pow5 (at the top) through pow1 (at the bottom). Reminder to developers, I can't post 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). Oh, and in case you didn't notice, they're a great way to get money from Dom, really!
Name: 4465
Description: This bug contains a compilation of numerous spelling-related bugs. Interested parties can do simple work, like Q&A to see what's still there, to more complex work, like dialogue fixin' and locale conversion If you have a current Abi and some time, you, too, can help
Advertisement: My spelring dilog isn nt ther
Recommended Outline: Whatever's easiest for you
Comments: All in all, there's something for everyone in there.
System: Any and every OS.
AbiVersion: Current (1.0.4, I would guess, dev and cvs releases may occur as well)
Challenge level: Variable
Current Heroes: You must be magical to know how to fix this
Name: Project Blue Ant.
Description: Perform component-specific tests, document procedural changes and open bugs as necessary.
Advertisement: Play the game and get a hero credit; more recognition than QA!
Recommended Outline: Email abiwordtesting@matthewcraig.com and include available system types, AbiVersions and previous testing experience. Receive testing instructions which will take one to two hours to complete.
Comments: No experience required. A good way to be introduced to AbiWord contribution efforts.
System: Any and every OS.
AbiVersion: 1.0.4 only (for now at least)
Challenge level: *.... 1 star out of 5
Current Heroes: "Some of the most active were Mikey Cooper, Tom Purl and Eric Blom."
Name: Style and/or Diction Plugin(s) (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
The MoFos who had the Huevos for this POW:
(crash on print)
Daniel Jensen
(text work around)
Name: More Windows Maintainers
Description: Jordi and Jeremy 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 Heros: Jordi Mas, Jeremy Davis
Bug Update
Bug Market
![[graph]](../graphs/abi_bugs-2003.05.04.png)
This week's activity: ResoUnconf +30 (31 : 1), VeriNew +10 (19 : 9), ClosAssi -10 (3 : 13),
For information about how to view the chart, please read this week's Special Interest.
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. Ah, another release, another change of what bugs are on the "Most Wanted" list.
| Top 20 Problems | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 376 | 80 | 2.0 | File associate problems for all file types with Win32Slu...... |
| 3550 | 60 | --- | Mouse wheel still bugged in documents >59 pages |
| 428 | 49 | 2.0 | Hitting return at the beginning of a paragraph changes fo...... |
| 2362 | 30 | 1.0.x | AbiWord only prints across half of page |
| 3778 | 30 | --- | Hanging indent setting ignores units |
| 3970 | 30 | --- | changing layouts can lead to showing other location than ...... |
| 4049 | 30 | --- | Crash on open file from floppy or network drive. |
| 4722 | 30 | --- | When using -p or --print the output isn't usable |
| 4745 | 30 | Future | Change colour of foreground text for screen only |
| 2868 | 25 | 2.0 | character widths are not calculated correctly for some fonts... |
| 4266 | 23 | --- | Punctuation misplaced in bi-directional text (Arabic and ...... |
| 2421 | 20 | 2.0 | TM, Bullet, Euro, Smart Quotes and other symbols originat...... |
| 1394 | 17 | 2.0 | on-screen landscape actually prints portrait in Win95 |
| 2924 | 15 | --- | printing abw documents defaults to black pages |
| 3216 | 15 | 1.0.x | [Tabstops Cannot be Set in Second (or Third) Column |
| 3801 | 15 | --- | Incremental loader seems to struggle with large files |
| 1865 | 13 | --- | Header/footer not loaded properly from .doc |
| 2962 | 13 | 2.0 | Printer problems with Lexmark printers on Windows |
| 1613 | 11 | 1.0.x | undo does not know about replacing |
| Top 20 Requests For Enhancement | |||
| ID | Votes | Milestone | Summary |
| 2183 | 330 | Future | Fully Support OpenOffice's XML file format |
| 3668 | 111 | --- | Support for window tabs instead of separate windows |
| 1374 | 96 | Future | [RFE] print odd and/or even pages only (for front & back ... |
| 2490 | 96 | 2.0 | Finish Cocoa Frontend |
| 1950 | 94 | Future | Wish for automatic Table of Contents |
| 2565 | 72 | Future | Add true MS Word .doc export capability |
| 2321 | 70 | --- | [RFE] Maths/Equation Editing, as a plugin maybe? |
| 1144 | 67 | Future | Improve KWord import/export filters |
| 4057 | 60 | --- | Thesaurus Shift+F7 keybindings shortcuts consistency |
| 515 | 41 | Future | columns change should only affect selected text |
| 2365 | 39 | --- | AbiWord needs 'view codes' |
| 2366 | 39 | Future | implement floating frame |
| 1929 | 37 | Future | Hyphenation is missing in Abiword |
| 2186 | 30 | Future | The insert page break setting is lost for custom styles |
| 2219 | 27 | Future | AUTONUM wanted in [ Insert/Field/Number ] menu |
| 2164 | 25 | Future | Ability to set default print command anywhere |
| 2296 | 25 | Future | doc import: footnotes |
| 2169 | 24 | Future | Line numbering |
| 1235 | 21 | Future | [RFE] Not possible to change zoom and font size on toolba...... |
Release HackDown
This is an AbiWord Weekly News original concept: The Release Hackdown. In the table below, you can watch what bugs are being fixed in preparation for the very next release. Check the key at the bottom to understand formatting.
No pressure, guys, I'm sure only 2000 or so people will be watching to see what you do weekly. That breaks down to about 285 people daily and 12 people hourly, so, it's like being peeked at once every five minutes, literally. "Isn't that veird!?"
Stable
Yo, with 1.0.6 on the way, the 1.0.7 hackdown is only a few AWNs away.
| HackDown to 1.0.5 | |
| Bug ID | Description |
| 2223 | cannot open psiWord files (re-opened) |
|
|
crash on zoom |
| 3239 | [META] Windows printing bugs |
|
|
Crashes repeatably while attempting to edit header |
| 3488 | Weird crash when editing |
| 3561 | Crash on embedded AbiWord in Evolution |
| 3625 | Multi Substitution waste memory |
| 3632 | editing the numbering style of a roman numeral list hangs/crashes |
|
|
Page setup has a problem with margins in millimeters |
| 3678 | [STABLE]Crash when editing this Word document |
| 3697 | [crash] blank AbiWord document viewed as text (View Source) |
|
|
AbiWord crashes during import of this MS Word document |
| 3766 | Dvorak Keyboard |
| 3858 | export wrong content when choosing export to "Simplified Chinese GB_2312-80" encoded text |
| 4068 | Crash when mouse leaves selected header |
| 4070 | [META] crash on load bugs |
| 4093 | Program Terminates on Open |
| 4097 | Save dialog file extension weirdness |
| 4125 | .doc file does not import correctly (BiDi issues). |
| 4183 | Save/reload puts spurious characters in simple file in 1.0.3 |
| 4283 | // comments expose lots of bugs |
| 4304 | crash when changing font of certain text (e.g. page numbers) |
| 4363 | [STABLE] Abi crashes after document open/close if text selected |
| 4449 | EV_EditBindingMap::removeBinding() leaks |
|
|
Format > Tabs dialog box completely broken |
| 4531 | Page breaks ignored in RTF |
| 4559 | section break handling is broken |
| 4647 | Abiword 1.0.4 crashes with zh_CN Chinese font locale |
|
|
Abiword.exe Entry Point Not Found |
|
|
AbiWord 1.0.4 does not compile with gcc-3.2.2 and perl-5.8.0 |
|
|
|
| 1 | Unconfirmed |
| 12 | Unapproached |
| 10 | Assigned |
| 7 | Resolved |
|
*Strike-out bug numbers and greyed text are resolved. *Bold bug numbers and bold text are assigned. *Italicized bug numbers and italicized text are unconfirmed. *Normal bug numbers and normal text have not yet been approached. |
|
Head
On our way to two-point-oh, affectionately referred to as, AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom.
| HackDown to AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom | ||
| Bug ID | Open of Total | Description |
| 2145 | 4 of 5 | FCC 508 accessibility regulation compliance |
| 2921 | 2 of 2 | abi can leak memory [tracker bug] |
| 3064 | 6 of 7 | [TRACKER] AbiWord Performance |
| 3239 | 20 of 38 | [META] Windows printing bugs |
| 4142 | 3 of 12 | make AbiWord comply with GNOME HIG |
| 4425 | 0 of 0 | squash all warnings |
| 4465 | 19 of 37 | [META] Spelling bugs |
| 4466 | 10 of 22 | [META] "Motion" Bugs |
| 4467 | 8 of 11 | [META] Find/Replace bugs and enhancements |
| 4473 | 0 of 0 | numbers in bidi word doc are reversed |
| 4488 | 1 of 13 | [META] Help System Bugs |
| 4627 | 11 of 16 | [META] Copy/Paste bugs |
| 5007 | 0 of 0 | bidi in tables |
| 5023 | 0 of 0 | format footnote dialogue needs 'do not restart' option |
We have three new additions this week. It occurs to me that the two bidi bugs should be part of a meta-bug for bidi, and quite possibly the other bug could be pulled into a meta-bug for the minimum requirements of footnotes and endnotes by Martin. At least we have something new we can watch for now.
See Announce: 2.0 release plan for more details on the intended route towards Abiword II: The Wrath of Dom.
Special Interest
This rarely appearing feature comes from Jesper Skov, previous editor of the Abiword Weekly News. It involves the newly restored Bug Graph, now available in the Bug Market section of the AWN. It explains the relation between bugs, filers and all users of bugzilla, and how said users have been affecting development. You are to be reminded that, at all points, it is still vitally important that bugs are filed for the development of AbiWord.
You have to understand it was not meant as a tool to gauge AbiWord development progress, but rather to highlight the fact that users are not good (enough) at helping us help them. This is an important point!
Anyway, here goes. Rant in []:
o Unconfirmed Bugs:
Tells us how well we keep up with confirming problems reported in bugs. Bugs in this state can be "processed" by everybody - its level is an indirect (and probably imprecise) indication of how good users (and dedicated non-hacking helpers) are at helping the developers find and confirm bugs.
[The trend looks to be unchanged - we're usually on top of this and users have an incentive to help, which is why it's under control.
Still, there is ~100 bugs which are unconfirmed. In other words ~100 (potential) bugs which will generally be ignored by the developers. Which is sad. We'd like the users to help here - with the amount of users (evidently) aware of BugZilla, it should be possible to get this one down to >10.]
o Resolved/unverified Bugs:
Tells us how well we keep up with verifying fixes from the developers. Again, bugs in this state can be processed by everybody - most interestingly the reporters. It shows us how good reporters (and other users/helpers) are at following up on the developers' work.
[The trend is clearly that our users are not concerned with Bugs reported in BugZilla, after they have been fixed. Which is sad because it means they do not realize that the cost of leaving the verifying process to the developers means both that
(a) it gets to be a bulk operation when the bugs get old enough (see the sharp drop at the start of April which is when I went on the rampage the last time).
(b) the reporter-to-verifier ratio is large, so which would take each reporter 10 minutes to do, ends up taking many hours for the developers. Hours that could have been spent fixing bugs.]
o New/Assigned Bugs (i.e. confirmed Bugs)
Tells us how many "officially recognized" bugs we have, which are still pending a fix. Obviously, only developers can do something about these.
[The trend *was* a slow increase, because the number of users reporting problems grow quicker than the number of bugs the developers are able to fix.
Things do look amazingly good after December last year though. So the developers are clearly processing more bugs. Which is cool.]
An additional note from your current editor about using bugzilla. Here are just some quick points that can really help. First, don't you hate doing something that's already done for you? If so, use bugzilla to search for bugs similar to the one you have. This will allow you to confirm the existence of a bug that someone else might also be experiencing. Second, when you receive the RESOLVED notification, don't just assume you'll see it working fine in the next release. If you can, try using a nightly build to test, that is to say, VERIFY that the bug has been squashed. Finally, if you have some time you'd like to use to help the developers, you could check the latest UNCONFIMRED bugs of your platform, and see if they've already been filed, and if not, whether or not you can reproduce them.
Open Source, Open Books.
Last Updated: April 10, 2003Approximately 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
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