AbiWord Roadmap

The current version of this roadmap reflects a proposal which does not yet have much consensus around it. Specifically, the proposal is to redefine version 1.0 as having a very limited feature set, in order to finish it much more quickly. The idea here is that we need to get at least some limited level of functionality 'finished' and then move on to fill in the missing features. "Release Early, release often." Comments, questions, or concerns about this approach should be sent to the abiword-dev mailing list. --EWS

Last updated: 25 May 1999, the current tarball is 0.7.0
Please see the explanatory notes at the bottom of this list.

0.9/1.0 1.1/1.2 Unknown Future

We'll consider AbiWord to be at version 0.9 when it has [substantially] all of the features we want in our "1.0" release. Accordingly, the list below represents our current plan for the "1.0" feature set. This list is still subject to a certain amount of change.

Note that our target feature set for version 1.0 is very basic. "Version 1.0 is the beginning, not the end."

After sufficient bug fixing on the 0.9 code base, we'll call it 1.0.0 and consider it to be a maintenance tree. When we're ready to start adding post-1.0 features, we'll fork a new development tree for the 1.1/1.2 series releases.

User feedback from the 1.0 release will be used to determine priorities for the 1.2 release. The following list is extremely tentative right now.

We're not quite sure where these features go yet.

Features

finish headers and footers (eric@abisource.com)
DLOG: Format/Paragraph
DLOG: Format/Tabs
DLOG: File/Page Setup (aka Format/Section) (with page margins, size, orientation)
DLOG: Format/Columns
DLOG: Insert/Break
DLOG: Insert/Page Numbers
DLOG: Insert Date,Time
DLOG: Insert Field
DLOG: Insert Symbol
DLOG: Spell check
DLOG: Options, with tabs for various kinds of options
Clipboard support for formatted text. (Define/implement interaction of clipboard with import/export APIs to allow for copy/paste of formatted text. Support copy/paste of RTF in this manner, verifying that it interoperates with Microsoft Word on Win32 systems.)
Context menu for spell, with suggestions for mis-spelled words.
RTF export
Replace Word97 import code with a more maintainable code base. (sterwill@abisource.com, justin@ukans.edu)
Other
Design and implement a consistent scheme for moving documents between systems (including between differing platforms) and preserving as much of the font information as possible.
paragraph full justification
Notable Bugs
bug: spaces should not wrap to the beginning of a line (362) (eric@abisource.com)
fix bug 7 (character overhang redraw problems) (eric@abisource.com)

Gnome-ify
show invisibles
lists
horizontal rules
tabs: center, right
View/Toolbars
View/Ruler
View/Status Bar
Context menu for images
Context cursors for image
DLOG: goto
DLOG: word count
switch to UTF-8 encoding for internal piece table storage (jeff@abisource.com, eric@abisource.com)
Cleanup mapping of Unicode encodings to font encodings, focusing on: bullets, dashes, fancy quotation marks, symbols, dingbats (eric@abisource.com)
online help (in HTML?)
tables
import/export WordPerfect (lansdoct@screech.cs.alfred.edu, shannonw@cygnus.com)
Tag by language so spell checker can use the right dictionary
Figure out whether to change dictionary file format (ispell file format is completely dependent upon compiler and platform)
image resize. Involves the addition of "handles" on the corners and edges of the image, when it's selected for resize. Requires mouse interaction and drag code. This should be possible to do entirely in XP code.
superscripts/subscripts
vertical keeps (partially done, in fb_ColumnBreaker.cpp)
horizontal keeps

Qt port, anyone? :-)
MacOS port, anyone? John Brewer (jbrewer@jera.com) has checked in a start on this.
HTML import (michael@surfnetcity.com.au)
Inline marks for bookmarks, TOC, index, etc. (julian.morrison@virgin.net)
Word 97 export
autosave
automatic switching to fancy quotation marks
Experiment with cons as a replacement for our build system. Would this get us faster, more accurate builds on more platforms?
floats
improvements to RTF importer
Tip of the Day

print preview (zoom works as a nice substitute)
SVG graphics (currently being investigated by Matt Kimball)
normal view
drop caps
paragraph borders and shading
footnotes
outline mode
decimal-aligned tabs
Table of contents
macros and scripting
Multilingual document support for CJKV, Hebrew, Arabic
Background color
Threads

Notes

This roadmap changes a lot. More specifically, the status and plan for the project changes a lot, and this roadmap struggles to keep up.
Version numbers use a scheme similar to the Linux kernel: Major.Minor.Patch -- The Major version number indicates the overall version of the app, with differences distinguishing very substantial levels of features. The Minor version number indicates an overall level of features within that Major version. Odd numbered Minor versions are development releases which are not in maintenance. A release with an even numbered Minor version indicates a release which is believed to be stable and which will be maintained even as development of the next version proceeds in a separate source code tree.
There will not be a 0.6.0 release, as the features worked on during the 0.5.x releases will not be placed in a maintenance tree.
There will not be a 0.8.0 release, for the same reason.
This is, in some sense, a To-Do list. However, since it does not include a complete listing of bugs, it should not be regarded as the only listing of work that needs to be done. The difference between a bug and a missing feature can be subtle, at times. We mention a specific bug here under certain circumstances, such as when we know that we'll want it to be fixed for a certain release. In general, you should check our bug database for additional information. The mention of specific bugs in association with specific releases is not intended to imply that those are the only bugs which will get fixed for that release.
In general, this list contains only work which is not yet done. Once it's done, we remove it from this list. If it's partially done, we'll remove it and replace it with a reminder of the part that's not done yet. If you want a summary of what has already been done, we'd suggest our Bonsai or archives of the mailing list.
If you see an email address specified in parenthesis after any item, that's the person we believe is working on it, or who has mentioned an intent to do so. If there's no email address there, we probably don't know who's doing it. Contributors welcome, AbiWord is a Bazaar.
Please notify the mailing list if you see anything on this list which is inaccurate or out-of-date.
If you want to work on something, please mention your intent to do so on the mailing list. This will allow us to avoid clashes and keep this roadmap up to date. Also, most of the features mentioned below have had at least some discussion, so there is a history of assumptions about how each feature should work. We don't have a full, written spec for the behavior of everything, so if you want to uncover those assumptions, you'll have to ask. :-)
The project mailing list is abiword-dev@abisource.com.