msevior ([info]msevior) wrote,
@ 2005-10-04 10:29:00
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AbiWord-2.4 released!
AbiWord-2.4 has been released!

A world first in free software. Now with an integrated Grammar Checker!

Read all about it http://www.abisource.com/release-notes/2.4.0.phtml

Download it for Linux, Windows and Mac's http://www.abisource.com/download/

Enjoy our latest gift to Humanity :-)

(Post a new comment)

My take
[info]eugenia_loli
2005-10-04 01:10 am UTC (link)
There are three major problems with the 2.4 Abiword version for OSX:
1. SLOW. Backspacing and typing is seriously lagging on my 867 Mhz G4 Powerbook.
2. FONTS. They look terrible, with vector or 100% zoom modes on the default window size. Check here: http://eugenia.co.uk/images/abiword.png
3. VISUAL ARTIFACTS. These artifacts below some fonts (while typing or backspacing) existed since the first Abiword versions and they are still not fixed.

Abiword for OSX should be clearly marked as beta at this point IMHO. I endorse the effort, but it is really not polished atm.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-04 01:18 am UTC (link)
Please figure out what situations these bugs come up in, and report them to the AbiWord bugzilla at http://bugzilla.abisource.com/ (http://bugzilla.abisource.com/) where they will help others far more (ie, by getting fixed) than simply being posted in someone's blog. Thanks.

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Re: My take
[info]eugenia_loli
2005-10-04 01:34 am UTC (link)
These bugs exist at ALL times, this is why I posted it here, as a comment to the situation, not as a bug report. I am pretty certain that these 3 bugs exist on all Macs (they happen on BOTH my Macs). I don't think that obvious bugs liked these should be expected to be filed at the bugzilla. From the moment Abiword does not pass 'smoke testing', IMHO developers should have fixed these bugs before releasing and not expecting obvious bug reports.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: My take
[info]simos74
2005-10-04 02:57 am UTC (link)
Sadly the Windows version does not get that much love either as it does not support Unicode.

It has been at bugzilla for some time but no hands to deal with them:
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1625
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4476

I suppose the OS/X situation is also well-known, there are probably are not many developers to work on this.

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(Deleted post)
Re: My take
[info]simos74
2005-10-04 03:05 am UTC (link)
Mmm, it appears you are an Abiword developer?
I have taken the time/effort to help complete the Abiword Greek translation and also contributed to some bug reports.

When I see such antisocial and mean attitude, it really puts me off.
From now on, I am off Abiword.

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Re: My take
[info]eugenia_loli
2005-10-04 03:33 am UTC (link)
>Eugenia is notoriously serious to bash OSS softwar

I am seriously serious about the software I and others use, yes. AbiWord is a popular piece of software, it needs more bug-squashing before it gets released for wide public consumption as "stable".

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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Re: My take
[info]simos74
2005-10-04 11:42 am UTC (link)
You are still being abusive and the sad thing is that you cannot figure it out!
If you disagree with a person, you make your points in a civilised manner.

In a futile attempt to make you realise what you are doing wrong, have a look at
http://www.martianrock.com/?p=130
and read through the comments.

2x off.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: My take
[info]eugenia_loli
2005-10-04 04:54 pm UTC (link)
Indeed. Simos, it seems that someone or Hubert himself has deleted the posts we were replying to.

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Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-05 12:51 am UTC (link)
May it be for the greater peace, the betterment of AbiWord, and the common good. Let it go and move on to achieve new things.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Please help out and report any problems to buzilla
[info]alanhorkan
2005-10-05 01:23 pm UTC (link)
> it needs more bug-squashing before it gets released for wide public consumption as "stable".

release early release often

unreleased software does not get enough testing and many of the problem do not show up until after a release.
alternatively the choice is between a release with a few known problems (like on Mac OS) or no release at all

the abiword developers make efforts to provide nightly build and source tarballs and and encourage people test things out as best they can.

request and reports in bugzilla can be kept track of and will not be forgotten.
although some of us might notice comments made in peoples journal there is very little chance of getting the kind of response and action you want from comments alone.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: My take
[info]eugenia_loli
2005-10-04 04:15 am UTC (link)
here is someone else with the same problems btw:
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedback/article.php?story=20051003194825513

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-04 03:11 am UTC (link)
Don't let one off the cuff comment turn you off of AbiWord. It seems that Eugenia has a habit of raining on people's parades in public places where it is visible but not terribly helpful. There are many people involved in AbiWord and many more users who appreciate your contributions - vocal minorities can be difficult to deal with, especially when we only have two Mac OS X developers and it is arguably the most difficult port of AbiWord to maintain.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-05 05:23 pm UTC (link)
For a speed/memory usage comparison, take a look at http://www.geocities.com/typopl/bug5291.html#2005Oct3

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Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-05 05:58 pm UTC (link)
Wrap the URL in <a></a> tags.

Make that http://www.geocities.com/typopl/bug5291.html#2005Oct3 (http://www.geocities.com/typopl/bug5291.html#2005Oct3)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-05 09:27 pm UTC (link)
Turn off auto grammar check. It's real CPU HOG.

For 2.6.0 we will focus on performance. Especially for tables. That said we put in a number of improvements into 2.4.0 thatshould have improved it's speed so this result is very dissapointing.

I'll look at that bug. Thanks for the clue and please post this comparison into a bugzilla bug.

Cheers,

Martin


Martin

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Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-10 06:17 pm UTC (link)
I did turn off grammar checking and spell-checking. No noticeable difference in perf.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-05 09:35 pm UTC (link)
Ah, Hi Johnny! It took me a while to realize who you were.

I'll definately look to see what's causing the RTF import problem. I continually tested importing the rtf spec import during the devel cycle because it's very sesnsitive to doing something stupid.

Hopefully I can fix it.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: My take
[info]msevior
2005-10-06 01:20 am UTC (link)
Hi Johnny!
Thanks very much for this. I've just fixed the various bugs that were preventing us from loading the RTF specification document. The load times for RTF spec are probabally a bit better than what you measured for 2.2.10.
The code has been checked into CVS HEAD if you want to build and try again.

We'll prolly make a 2.4.1 release in a few days.

I expect we can get the load time for this doc reduced by a factor of at least 2 if we complete the speed ups we've identified in our wikki.

See:

AbiWord Performance

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: My take
(Anonymous)
2005-10-14 06:24 pm UTC (link)
I just DL'd 2.4.1 and ran the "load RTF spec" test again. I guess your fixed didn't make it into 2.4.1 because I don't see any difference. AbiWord hangs at 98% after about 65 secs.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]msevior
2005-10-04 01:19 am UTC (link)
Hi Eugina,
Thanks for the screenhot! I'm sur eour OSX developers will find this useful.

Cheers

Martin

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[info]hub_
2005-10-04 01:29 am UTC (link)
only if in bugzilla.

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[info]msevior
2005-10-04 03:22 am UTC (link)
*sigh* I know that Tomas Frydrych, Roland Kay and others have donated a huge amount of time to getting this working. I believe the trouble is our desire to maintain simultaneous support for Windows 9X and later versions of Windows.



(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]hub_
2005-10-04 05:46 am UTC (link)
just a quick note: there is a "Reply to this" under each post. It is convenient to keep threads :-)

ok, it is your journal.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]bluey
2005-10-04 12:10 pm UTC (link)
Three words about Win9x: seven years old! Give up the ghost, man! :)

Mikey

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
give up the ghost
[info]alanhorkan
2005-10-04 02:47 pm UTC (link)
I think support for older versions of Windows has given Abiword users where no one else has them.
chances are this could be the last version of abiword for Windows 9x but hopefully Abiword 2.4 does enough to keep most users of old 9x happy.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]hub_
2005-10-04 04:17 pm UTC (link)
Do you know how many people can't just afford upgrading hardware.... and software.

You all seems to be rich enough to keep the pace on hardware upgrade

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[info]bluey
2005-10-04 05:03 pm UTC (link)
Well, I'm not exactly running cutting edge hardware, my primary PC these days is a 1 ghz laptop with a slow, clunky hard drive. I believe you were more referring to the software part, i.e. people not upgrading to Windows XP.

Win9x users will, more than likely, find that the 2.4.x branch fulfills most of their needs. As far as features, 2.4 seems pretty rich and has a sense of completeness to it. I don't see the issue with not supporting older operating systems for 2.6.x and onward, especially if it will free up scarce win32 developer resources to work on something like native Unicode support. It'd also make it easier to clean up a lot of cruft (like my horrible butchering of the url handler to get it mostly supported on the olders OSes).

Those users that are unable to upgrade (or don't feel there's enough justification for the cost, even if they can afford it) to get the latest technology may be good candidates for introduction to the whole philosphy of Free Software, vis-a-vis Linux.

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[info]hub_
2005-10-04 05:59 pm UTC (link)
people that don't upgrade hardware barely upgrade software, because they are most of the time intimately linked.

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[info]bluey
2005-10-04 06:15 pm UTC (link)
So they won't care about upgrading from 2.4.x to something newer, right? ;)

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[info]hub_
2005-10-04 06:53 pm UTC (link)
that upgrade is actually cost-less.... and it is not like upgrading Windows... so WE do care.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2005-11-06 08:02 pm UTC (link)
Abiword is buggy as hell, I prefer OOo Writer instead

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