AbiWord - 2.3.99 Released - Last Chance to Find Release Showstoppers!

Welcome, all readers, to what will likely be one of the last entries I make before the release of AbiWord 2.4! Tonight, we pushed out AbiWord 2.3.99, which is quite symbolically the last release before 2.4. This time, I did get both tools and import/export plugins built successfully, so those will be posted as soon as Marc wakes up and looks at his computer, and finds enough binaries to update the web site. Until then, here are the installers for Windows. (Please check the official location first though to enable us to better count downloads…) Please download the tools plugins to test Math and Grammar support as well, since these are among the major features of 2.4. Thank you!

And, since it appears that it is fashionable to suggest a release name, I will throw my suggestion into the ring. Going along with my splash screen for 2.4, I suggest that the release be named “Your Keyboard Is Trying To Tell You Something”, since all distinguished keyboards work best in AbiWord.

Short entry tonight, because I’m busy and I want to leave you with enough time to run the download count on 2.3.99 up! Later!

AbiWord - We need your testing help now!
2.3.6 has been a huge release. On Windows, we’ve already had over 15000 downloads of the main installer, and it’s just a development release. However, we need your help testing the plugins, especially math and grammar! These two new plugins are in the Tools Plugins install file, which hasn’t gotten nearly that many downloads.

To add to the thrill of testing a development version, I’m making a special public offer. I am building Windows installers from CVS head and hosting them here. They are functionally identical to the 2.3.6 installers (at least, the ones newer by date…) except that I got import/export to build too. They say they are version 2.3.99 but they are not 2.3.99, simply CVS HEAD prior to that upcoming final beta release! Please download and test the latest ones available on that site, and give us feedback! I will be uploading new binaries almost every day until 2.4 is released - come help us out!

Thanks for reading and trying AbiWord!

AbiWord - 2.3.6 Released!

While I was out of town this weekend, Uwog apparently got to the point where he was happy enough with everything to push out a 2.3.6 development release. I have since obliged with Windows installers of the core program and the tools plugins (which is where Math/equation editing and grammar checking are). True to my experiences, the boring things (the import/export plugins) that usually work just fine aren’t working, so the import/export plugin installer isn’t quite ready. You will be able to get these files from AbiSource.com in a while, until then, you can get them right from me in my builds location here. Please, please, please, if you use Windows, download, install, and test these files, especially the grammar checking plugin and our equation editor, both in the tools plugin installer. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Please note: the standard disclaimer of development versions applies, especially since this is the first release build (even development) for Windows that has both math and grammar enabled. However, I feel pretty confident, so don’t let that turn you away from testing. Just don’t bank anything critically important on it. The nice thing with AbiWord, is that even if something goes terribly wrong, the file format is just based on XML, so you can open it in another version or even Notepad and get your data.

Thank you for your help!

Domain Names, or, Uwog, where are you?
You may have noticed that above, I said you could get the installers from the standard location “in a while”. This is because, due to an unusual and unfortunate combination of circumstances, I can neither get to IRC or email Uwog. The IRC problem should be fixed within a day (just need to get my DynDNS fixed), but the email problem is a bit more of Uwog’s problem - it looks like he got his domain name stolen! uwog.net is now a netherlandish Audi fansite instead of his personal website which it was just a few days ago. Whois doesn’t show anything is wrong, but my email bounced and the web is wrong. Hopefully, he will read this and if he wasn’t already aware of the problem, he will be. I may remove this if he fixes the problem - this is just the best method I have to contact him at the moment.

Remember, when testing my new build of AbiWord on Windows, file bugs at our Bugzilla!

AbiWord - it’s so close…
So a little .pc file tweaking fixed OpenDocument and WordPerfect, I realized I already have a good install of link-grammar which already has a configure, and I could bug someone to roll a tarball with configure if I really needed it to bootstrap again. Psion plugin still conflicts on load, but I expected that and the workaround is in bugzilla bug 9420 - don’t install/load the bz2abw plugin.

Which leaves me with the menu problem. Initial testing results of other people with my installers made me think I was going insane, but it turns out they were installing just the math plugin, while I installed all the plugins. Now the bug can be reproduced. Turns out it’s a conflict between the Paint Plugin and the Math Plugin, as they both add to the same menu and that somehow breaks our menuing code. This is a bit above my head, but I’ll look at it and make some motions as if I knew what I was doing in that code, and one day I very well may.

Please, take a peek if you know about Abi or about Windows ui programming - we need more eyes to make this shallow.