## 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.