Abiword problem in 4.2

Please post any bugs you have found
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rcrsn51
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#46 Post by rcrsn51 »

Perhaps we can draw some conclusions from all of this:

1. Using a full release of Puppy as a test bed for individual pieces of software is a mistake.

2. Each package should be thoroughly tested using some systematic procedure before it ever gets near the overall build.

3. Introducing a new package or attempting to upgrade a package in the middle of the development process is asking for trouble.

4. Third-party criticism is an important part of the process.

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ttuuxxx
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#47 Post by ttuuxxx »

lets just say I was nice enough to remove my post, then I read my emails and found a PM from ecomoney-Rob, and from what he said, he's lucky I removed my post, If I would of read that PM first I wouldn't never removed my responses.
ttuuxxx

Ps now i don't feel so Bad, Thanks Rob :), But i bet you do :wink:
Your lucky Rob, I had a screenshot of the PM I was going to post here, I actually did for about 2 seconds then removed it.
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ecomoney
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#48 Post by ecomoney »

Yes, like I say I am sorry I lost my cool too, Theres no need to feel bad about past mistakes as long as theyre fixed and taken as learning experiences for the future. Im glad your feeling better.

Ttuxxx, you didnt have to remove your entire posts, just some of the "colourful" language that you used wasnt appropriate for a non-age restricted public forum. I personally dont mind it even if it is directed at me (I live and work amongst it all the time - its the common tongue around here), but others may.

Just to clarify to others, I did send a private PM asking Ttuxxx to moderate his words (in the type of language that is used around here) but none of that language was directed personally AT him, and it wasnt abusive to him in any way.

Photocopies by available request with proof of age. :roll:

@rcrsn51 Totally agree.....conclusions drawn
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WhoDo
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#49 Post by WhoDo »

rcrsn51 wrote:Perhaps we can draw some conclusions from all of this:

1. Using a full release of Puppy as a test bed for individual pieces of software is a mistake.

2. Each package should be thoroughly tested using some systematic procedure before it ever gets near the overall build.

3. Introducing a new package or attempting to upgrade a package in the middle of the development process is asking for trouble.

4. Third-party criticism is an important part of the process.
I'm not sure I'd agree with the conclusions, but the sentiment is valid:

1. Until now we have been "beggars" rather than "choosers". I haven't seen such enthusiasm for testing since the 2.15CE development, and yet we still didn't find the font bug in imported Word documents before the release. We are a small distro with limited resources.

2. That is what Git will provide for us, I hope.

3. I don't know when or how else you CAN introduce a new package or upgrade, especially in a distro this size. From the very first Alpha it is accepted that the updated or new packages included are potentially unstable. They should be stabilised before Beta, in the normal run of things, but we don't have a full blooded test regime with hundreds of people testing and trying to break things. We certainly aren't Microsoft yet they still manage to release buggy software.

I deliberately resorted to pushing out "Release Candidates" that were clearly of early Beta quality in order to broaden the pool of testers. Heck, Barry has even released a Final because he simply couldn't get testers, and knowing full well that he'd have to follow it with a point1 bug fix release. That's the world we live in as a small distro. Hopefully the many new Puppy users this version has attracted will enlarge the testing pool considerably.

4. Constructive criticism is always welcome. It just gets a bit annoying if the critics involved haven't participated in testing and have waited until AFTER the release to make their criticisms known, especially if they've employed an accusatory tone in their criticism. It's way too late to fix by then. The horse is long gone, so shutting the stable door is irrelevant. Calling the horse a bad name won't get him back in the stable!

@ecomoney - I just wish you'd stop calling the Abiword 2.6.6 font problem a "showstopper". That's just alarmist and inaccurate. To put the bug in perspective, IF you open Word documents created elsewhere than in Abiword and IF those documents used Times New Roman font, then Abiword would garble the fonts UNTIL you highlighted the text and changed it to a supported font. No loss of data, No failure to import. No insurmountable problem. Hence, no "showstopper" bug.

I appreciate how important the issue is to you and your clients. I am not attempting to minimise that importance, but the reality is that bugs are classified according to their impact and the impact of this one is very minor indeed. A "showstopper" would be if the application crashed the first time you entered any text, or failed to save or print despite other applications doing so quite well, or even failed to save or import to or from a supported format. None of those are true in this case. It was a bad font substitution issue, nothing more.

ttuuxxx has provided a workable solution. Problem solved, for now. Please let's all get off the misery-go-round and let this very ordinary thread die a very ordinary but hopefully swift death! :roll:
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cindy
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#50 Post by cindy »

I would like to say thank you to all the people that work so hard to enable me to use Linux.

Cindy

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capoverde
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#51 Post by capoverde »

Hi all,

to me this Abiword bug seems to be exactly the one referred to in my post for Puppy RC4:

..."Then tried typing in AbiWord with the Times font (RC4 with pfix=ram)... Surprise, no-go with this font, as well as Standard Symbols, Lucida Typewriter, Helvetica, Fixed, Dingbats and Courier..." (http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 665#286665)

Or am I totally off target?

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WhoDo
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#52 Post by WhoDo »

capoverde wrote:to me this Abiword bug seems to be exactly the one referred to in my post for Puppy RC4:

..."Then tried typing in AbiWord with the Times font (RC4 with pfix=ram)... Surprise, no-go with this font, as well as Standard Symbols, Lucida Typewriter, Helvetica, Fixed, Dingbats and Courier..." (http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 665#286665)

Or am I totally off target?
Not quite, but may obviously be related. This one was specifically in regard to documents created by applications other than by Abiword (e.g. in Word itself) and then imported. When imported with those font types they were garbled. When you said typing them was "no-go" I'm not sure what that means. Were they garbled or just didn't produce any typed output at all?

I may have missed your bug report in RC4 about typing in Abiword using Times font and the others you mentioned. Does the regressed Abiword 2.6.3 with the 2.6.6 updates and plugins from the Puppy 4.2 "Deep Thought" Official Patches & Updates thread (or earlier in this thread) solve the problem you reported as well?
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capoverde
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#53 Post by capoverde »

WhoDo wrote:When you said typing them was "no-go" I'm not sure what that means. Were they garbled or just didn't produce any typed output at all?
All letters appeared superimposed one over the other (=spacing equal to or little more than zero). This happened both when typing a new document and opening one previously-made with one or more of the "flaky" fonts. As reported in my following post, surprisingly no TTF font I tried from the Win$ directory showed this behavior (but I tried only about a dozen).

Haven't yet tested the AbiWord 2.6.3+2.6.6 updates trick, will tell you tomorrow -- saw your post just before going to bed! (One minute to midnight here).

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ecomoney
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#54 Post by ecomoney »

Yes, it seems like the same bug to me. Being able to open documents created in Word is important, as "Linux Newbs" wont switch unless they know they can open their already created CV, schoolwork etc
Ttuxxx's idea for having one thread per bug (rather than one thread for all bugs) will hopefully ensure that all bug reports are investigated before release.
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capoverde
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#55 Post by capoverde »

After some snooze I've installed the updated AbiWord 2.6.3 and tested it.

Well, the main bug is gone, e.g., typing with the cited fonts now doesn't give superimposed letters, *but*... they're definitely not antialiased (while the fonts that worked previously appear OK).

There is one exception, doing even worse: the Standard Symbol font, which crashes AbiWord when hitting a key. But curiously, the "Insert symbol" command now works, and the same symbols offered by this font can be entered this way (!). Hope this may help find the bug.

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esmourguit
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#56 Post by esmourguit »

Bonjour,

How open a MSWord .docx format file directly in abiword?
Not sure to be in the proper forum.

I tested rox-docx.pet on Puppy 4.20, but it would not work. Don't know why.
Here is my alternative. I created a new bash file /root/Choices/MIME-types/Application_msword_docx
as follows:

Code: Select all

#! / bin / sh
defaultwordprocessor exec "$ 1"
I make it executable.
Then, I right click on a file .docx, opened the window "Set execution" and I introduced the newly created file /root/Choices/MIME-types/Application_msword_docx in location ad'hoc.
And now when I click on an file .docx, it opens directly in abiword.

Cordialement ;)
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#57 Post by ecomoney »

There is a fix for that somewhere on the forum...I think its under 4.2 Patches and updates.
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droope
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#58 Post by droope »

ecomoney wrote:There is a fix for that somewhere on the forum...I think its under 4.2 Patches and updates.
YOu know, if you'd like to see this fixed, I am sure whodo wouldn't mind editing his post with your corrected version, i mean, all you have to do is fix it and upload it ;) Sure you can do it if you want.

Do It Yourself, or suck it up is, I think, linux's policy.

Cheers,
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ecomoney
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#59 Post by ecomoney »

Do It Yourself, or suck it up is, I think, linux's policy.
Or wait until someone else with more skills inevitably does it for you and shares their work...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=40946

Bugfixed 4.2 with SMP support!
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ravensrest
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#60 Post by ravensrest »

Just downloaded ttuuxxx's Abiword 2.6.3 with 2.6.6 extensions and installed it in Puppy 4.2.

Solves the problem for me.

And thanks to all of you who have contributed so much to the development of Puppy over the years.

BS

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ecomoney
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#61 Post by ecomoney »

Ive been informed about a bug still in abiword latest versions, and I can confirm it still exists in abiword-2.6.3-updated.pet

Running abiword from the command line and trying to insert a symbol from the "insert" menu gives:-

Code: Select all

(abiword:28293): Pango-WARNING **: shaping failure, expect ugly output. shape-engine='BasicEngineFc', font='Standard Symbols L 32', text=''
Aborted
Ive looked into the bug (is there a thread for it somewhere?), and found some quite useful information...including a patch from the abiword team itself.

http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11731

http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs ... 20965.html

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=493565

My debugging skills are limited at best....some of the bugs above point to it being an abiword problem, and some to it being a "pango" problem.

Someone with more technical skill than me will need to look at this (i.e. practically anyone!), but my first reaction would be just to drop .docx support while the versions of abiword that support it are made more stable. Which is the previous version that was used in 4.1.2? that "just worked"?
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