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User: dos+equis

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  1. Re:In numerology... on Introducing Asteroid 2004 MN4 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not so fast!

    The number 4 in Japanese is "shi" (U+56DB), but "shi" also means death (U+6B7B)!
    It's just as unlucky as 13 in western culture, and more specific about our fate.

  2. Re:First use of "spam" on USENET, found via Google on Google Revises Usenet Search · · Score: 1

    I saw this done by somebody and since then I've been doing it myself on Wiktionary and sometimes Wikipedia to discuss the history, etymology, and legitimacy of various recent words. I hope it doesn't stay gone )-:

  3. A good idea but doesn't go far enough on Police Database Lists 'Future Criminals' · · Score: 2

    I think we should help out by setting up our own website with information on police officers and politicians who we believe are likely to become corrupt. It could feature names, addresses and photographs of potential corruptees --many of whom have clean slates.

  4. Re:never gonna work on Speech For The Deaf · · Score: 2

    Learning ASL isn't going to help you at all to communicate with the people this article is about.

    They're all signing Auslan which is about as close to ASL as English is to French.

  5. My open-source translator on SourceForge on Speaking in Tongues · · Score: 2

    I guess I ought to mention that I have a project
    on SourceForge called Linguaphile. It handles
    about 50 languages currently but only about 4 of
    them are remotely useful. The Spanish and
    Swedish are probably worth playing with. It's
    early days and needs lots of work but it does
    actually do something now. I'm really interested
    in finding people who would like to work on it.
    You can try it online or download it if you have
    Perl. Apologies in advance that there are no
    docs at all since I've had little interest:

    Linguaphile online

  6. Re:Why not RTF? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    Along with MSWord.doc and our native.abw formats, RTF is our most important format for all the reasons you cite. We really want it to be perfect and it's getting very very close.

  7. Re:Foreign Language Support on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    I thought our CJK support was pretty good. We seem to some problems with Korean but we know our Chinese support is good because we have at least one Chinese developer and we get feedback from our Chinese users.
    Most of us who work on the internationalization of AbiWord don't know any non-European languages very well. I try the CJK support and it seems okay to me but hey I'm only a gaijin (:
    Please file some bug reports so we know what the problems are and can attempt to fix them!

  8. Re:Mac OS X version 0.99 doesn't work on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    Please file a bug report.

  9. Re:lots of warnings on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    I think we'd accept a bug report that listed warnings that need to be fixed.

  10. Re:MacOS X on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    We want it too! Problem is we really on have one dedicated Mac developer and he also works on the other ports. All our attempts to attract other Mac developers haven't worked. Mac open source hackers seem to be very rare.
    If you can find us some, everybody will appreciate it.

  11. Re:Abiword offers no benefit beyond OpenOffice... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    When I felt like doing some hacking I looked at both OpenOffice and AbiWord.
    I didn't like that OpenOffice wasn't even attempting to support Mac.
    OpenOffice code was very difficult to get into and there internationalization web pages didn't seem very helpful. Internationalization was the aspect I was most interested in with a word processor.
    AbiWord code was very easy to get into and I had my first patch working the first day. Hacking AbiWord was very pleasurable and scratching my itches was very rewarding.

    Oh and my German is terrible so I couldn't even read OpenOffice's comments ):

    I will try to hack OpenOffice again some day though.

  12. Re:The main thing I notice when I open AbiWord... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2

    AbiWord can use whatever fonts are in your system.
    It does come with a few fonts that most documents tend to use but you can use the better ones on your system instead.
    Good quality free fonts are still scarce and we don't know about making fonts - only about makind applications.

  13. Re:Does it have "Reveal Codes" functionality?? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    It doesn't yet but there's an RFE that already has quite a few votes. We are accepting patches.

    "Make it Fit" sounds like a good feature. I recommend submitting a request if you really want it. That should get it some attention.

  14. Re:HELP! on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    There is no Swedish version of AbiWord.
    AbiWord checks your system locale when it starts up to decide what interface language to use.
    You need to go into "Settings/Control Panel/Regional Settings" and set it to "English (United States)" or whatever locale you prefer.

    If you want to keep your system locale Swedish but have AbiWord start up in English, you can edit your system.profile but this isn't documented yet.
    If you can't figure out how to do this then mail the user list.

  15. Re:Font Weirdness on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 3, Informative

    We know about this. Most users don't notice any problem. Some users have major problems. We acknowledge this and it's another one of our highest priorities for the next version.

    The next version will use Pango and FreeType and, on *nix, probably client-side-fonts via xft.
    I believe there are still some issues to get printing working properly with these newer *nix font solutions but we welcome any input.

  16. Re:X Windows should be taken... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    AbiWord is designed in such a way that porting to a new GUI is not very difficult. The most work is recreating all the dialogs but the toolbars, menus, etc also need to be implemented.

    We would definitely welcome any patches to support any other GUI you want to support.

  17. Re:Mac OS X support on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    A native OSX version is underway but we only have one developer doing almost all of this work along with the work he does on the other platforms.

    We would really love some more Mac developers!

  18. Re:Microsoft really raised the bar.... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MS Word does do a better job if i18n than us right now but, after tables and footnotes/endnotes, improving i18n is our next highest priority. We have a special metabug right now to track tricky multilinal problems.
    Work is already underway to add Pango and FreeType support.

    Even without them our Chinese support is very good, our Hebrew support is also very good (make sure you get the bidi-build), and our Arabic support should be good but I'm not sure how much testing it has received.

    So try it out with all the languages you want and file some bug reports!

  19. Re:tables???? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 4, Informative

    Table support is our most-requested-feature and our #1 priority for the next version. It's being worked on now.

    It does support Word 2000 and XP but if you find a feature for those formats that is missing, file an RFE.

  20. Re:Grammar Checking... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 2, Informative
    We already support spell checking for all these languages. We support check-as-you-type too.
    • American English
    • Brazilian Portuguese
    • British English
    • Catalan
    • Czech
    • Danish
    • German
    • Greek
    • Spanish
    • Esperanto
    • Finnish
    • French
    • Galician
    • Hungarian
    • Irish (Gaelic)
    • Italian
    • Lithuanian
    • Latin
    • Dutch
    • Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmal)
    • Polish
    • Portugues
    • Russian
    • Slovakian
    • Swedish
    • Swiss German
    • Ukrainian
  21. Re:Great.. on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    Please file a bug report!
    We're not Microsoft - we actually listen and fix our bugs.

  22. Re:is there anything like this coming out?? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    AbiWord does have extra Gnome-specific features when built as a Gnome application.
    We've also been talking to the Gnome and Gnumeric guys about getting the two tied even closer together.
    If you've got any specific ideas please file bugs or RFEs for them.

  23. Re:Grammar Checking... on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    We've talked about it but I just checked and nobody has officially requested it.
    Why not file an RFE now? Then the rest of you can vote on it and some of you can start hacking it!

  24. Re:Header/footer? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    After tables, this is our second highest priority.
    See the bug report and vote for it if you like.

  25. Re:What use is it? on AbiWord 1.0.1 Released · · Score: 1

    It's not a text editor, it's a word processor. Those are still 2 different things.
    I doubt even a single AbiWord developer uses AbiWord to hack AbiWord!

    That said, people have suggested making it more of a programmer's editor as well. Anybody can already make a syntax highlighter plugin if they want. Shouldn't even be difficult. (Actually that would be a lexial highligher - I've never seen any editor do syntax highlighting yet).
    Another thing missing as a source editor is tabs based on the size of spaces.

    Feel free to post an RFE on AbiWord's BugZilla if you really want this feature. Also feel free to start hacking it yourself - the AbiWord code is easy to get into.