From: Dom Lachowicz (doml@appligent.com)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 15:16:11 EDT
Allesandro,
I believe that there is a communication problem here - we've obviously
misunderstood what you want. There is most likely a bug here. I've
talked with Tomas Frydrych, and he's promised to look into your bug
ASAP, which I believe means "tomorrow" for him (UK time).
As a side note, I'm quite fed up with your temperment. You're just
asking for trouble now and trying to start another flame. We aren't
insulting you. We aren't necessarily ignoring you, at least not on
purpose. We get yelled at for not answering your bug. We get yelled at
for answering your bug. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't..."
Not a whole lot of developers are subscribed to this list, nor should
they have to be. Not a lot of developers are focusing on any one
particular bugzilla bug, including yours. Your bug is in a specific area
of code familiar to *one* person on our team. He is not subscribed to
this list, nor does he sort though bugzilla frequently. If you really
need to know, he is currently working on revisions and hidden text.
Our answers are short, but I'd rather think of them as "short and sweet"
or "short and to the point" rather than "short and insulting", as you
allege.
In order to properly triage a bug, we might need to know certain things:
1) Do you have a BiDi build
2) Did you hit the special buttons that you need to get BiDi working
3) What pperating system
4) Do you have the appropriate fonts installed
5) ...
This is not to be taken as patronizing. We *need* this information from
you in order to better help you. For example, I was contacted 2 weeks
ago from a user who said that a MSWord document crashed AbiWord. I asked
for the document in question, and he refused and flamed me for asking
for such a small and vital piece of information. His outrage is
unwarranted.
Do not take our questions as insults - if we feel that we need to know
something more in order to help you, you will give us that information
if you wished to be helped. Contrary to popular belief, this mailing
list exists for reasons other than to persecute/ignore you in
particular.
Don't let your frustrations get the best of you. You don't need to be
coddled. Life often presents you with answers you don't like, or
information that is less than helpful, in your opinion. Life goes on.
You're asking for favors from others, and we're trying to help you.
Please respect that.
The best thing that you could do at this moment is to post a link to
your message (http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-user/02/Jun/
... ) into your bugzilla bug, so that Tomas will see a better testcase
and better explanation when he looks at the problem tomorrow. The more
useful information he has, the better he can address your concerns.
Dom
/who used to get a good feeling from trying to help users/
On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 16:57, Alessandro Baretta wrote:
> Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> > Hi Allesandro,
> >
> > I've looked at your bug, and here's what I have to say on the subject:
> >
> > I think that you've confused paragraph alignment with character
> > alignment. What I want you to do is:
>
> Thanks, but, no, your help did not solve the problem.
>
> Now let me state that I feel somewhat offended by the
> standpoint taken by the developers who have gone through the
> trouble of answering me. Don't misunderstand me: I
> appreciate your work, and more so the time spent reading my
> requests and answering my specific problems. Yet, all my
> appreciation does not justify the the superficiality with
> which my requests have been dismissed. I have been
> repeatedly been addressed with a patronizing tone, and told
> either to download a bidi enabled build or to turn on bidi
> support. Both kinds of answers implicitly take for granted
> that I am idiot, have not read that there exist separate
> bidi enabled builds, have not gone through the trouble of
> downloading the correct software, and finally have not taken
> the time or effort to figure out how to activate the *one*
> feature I am looking for in Abiword. Now, why should I not
> be entitled to a little credit? I have filed a bug report
> after *repeatedly* asking for feedback on the mailing list.
> I would not file a blatantly invalid bug report on any piece
> of software, if at all I can avoid it.
>
> Now, Dom, you are very kind to answers me, but your answer
> does not help much. I do not have the "abc", "cba", or "P"
> buttons on the Extra Toolbar. Could this be due to the fact
> that I use the following abiword package:
> abiword-gnome-bidi-1.0.0-1.i686.rpm? Anyhow, I'll try
> downloading the latest build later on tonight.
>
> I take it for granted that the "cba" button activates
> "right-to-left" typesetting, whereas "abc" turns on the
> usual "left-to-right" style for european languages. If this
> is the case, then I am able to turn on the "cba" feature
> through the "Format->Paragraph...->Right-to-left document"
> checkbox. Please, take notice of the fact that I am not
> tampering with the text alignment pop-up menu, as you
> hypothesized.
>
> Now, weird behavior occurs: I believe you did not read the
> bug report carefully enough. Let me print out a few tests
> for you, so that you may realize just what happens. Let me
> also reiterate that if screenshots are needed, I would be
> more than glad to produce them.
>
> I will continue using the "quick brown fox" example, but,
> this time, I will not type spaces between words. This is
> what I type:
> >TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog.|
> And this is what I get on the screen:
> >|.goDzyaLehTrevOspmuJxoFnworBkciuQehT
>
> Once again, I have used vertical bars to indicate the
> position of the insertion caret. Up to this point, the
> program seems to work correctly. But, as soon as I type a
> space or any symbol other than a letter
> _the_whole_sentece_gets_reversed_!
>
> Here's the second test string:
> >TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog. AnotherWord|
> And this is what AbiWord produces on screen:
> >TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog. A|droWrehton
>
> Let me draw your attention to the fact that, after the first
> string gets reversed on the screen, one more letter appears
> in left-to-right mode (the capital "A"), then the following
> letters revert to right-to-left mode and appear to the right
> of the blinking caret. This produces the curious neologism:
> AdroWrethon
> 1BA98765432
> If the letters are read according to the ordering
> established by the hexadecimal digits below them, you will
> see they form the string "AnotherWord", as should be. But,
> of course, the "A" should appear at the far right, as
> opposed to the far left.
>
> Now, Dom and company, I use word processors rarely. I am
> more of a Tex-nician, to stick with Donald Knuth's jargon,
> yet I am perfectly capable of using one. Your counterpart in
> this discussion is an educated computer user, a Linux system
> administrator, and a programmer, albeit typically I use
> languages other than C/C++. I have given your team detailed
> information concerning the weird behavior of AbiWord on my
> system previously, and have not been given any credit in
> this respect. Proof of this is that Dom has closed my bug
> report with the usual "Worksforme" sort of comments. It is
> not up to me to teach you or anybody that a piece of
> software that works on one system is by no means guaranteed
> to work anywhere else. And it definitely does not work at my
> site, either under Linux or under Windows. I would be only
> too glad to take part in a diagnostic effort to identify the
> cause of the problem, but you cannot expect me to reverse
> engineer your code and all the shared code you link to.
>
> As I write I am downloading the latest version of Abiword. I
> will soon follow up on this post to let you know if, by
> chance, the problem is solved in the latest build.
> Otherwise, I entreat you to earnestly look into this
> problem, with the aid of all the feedback you might need
> from me.
>
> Very truly yours,
> Alex Baretta
>
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