[Cs22800] project status - AbiWord

[sam th]

Attached are two text files, one with an outline of the project plan,
and one with a status update.  

Ben, if you could put these on the website, that would be great. 

Thanks
-- 
sam th <sam at uchicago.edu>
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*CS22800 Project Description:
  AbiWord Compliance with the GNOME HIG

** About AbiWord

AbiWord is a a cross-platform, free software word processor. On
Unix/Linux platforms, it uses the GTK+ toolkit and the GNOME framework
to render and present its user interfaces.  AbiWord strives to
integrate itself properly with each platform it appears on.  This
means providing the top-of-screen menu bar on Mac OS, adhering to
Windows conventions on that platform, and complying with GNOME/GTK
standards on Unix/Linux.  

More about AbiWord is available at http://www.abisource.com.

** About the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)

The GNOME HIG is a project to provide standards to make the GNOME
project user interfaces consistent and easy to use across the entire
GNOME platform.  It consists in a set of guidelines that specify
behavior for everything from window titles to application
interoperability.  The HIG ensures that GNOME applications have a
consistent look and feel, and that they follow best practices for
usability of software. 

More about the HIG is available at
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig 

** AbiWord's compliance with the HIG

AbiWord had initially fairly low compliance with the specific details
of the HIG, although it followed many of the more general
reccommendations.  Dom Lachowicz, one of the principal AbiWord
developers, has implemented a number of the reccomendations since the
HIG was released.  However, AbiWord still has a ways to go on this
front. 

** My plan of action

*** HIG understanding

The first step is to understand the reccomendations of the GNOME HIG
and the rationale behind them.  This requires reading the HIG, of
course, and also the sources that it draws on, such as the Apple Aqua
Interface Guidelines, on which the GNOME HIG was largely modeled.  

*** AbiWord evaluation

AbiWord must be evaluated for its compliance with the HIG.  This will
take the form of filing bugs in BugZilla, the AbiWord bug tracking
system, which will keep track of the all the outstanding issues with
respect to compliance with the HIG.  

More about Bugzilla is available at http://bugzilla.abisource.com.

Additionally, I plan to talk to members of the GNOME Usability team
about their opinions of AbiWord usability, and ask them for a
comprehensive UI review, which they are in the process of doing for
many GNOME applications.  

*** Bug fixing

After the bugs have been identified, they must then be fixed.  I will
be doing the majority of this work, however, since this is a free
software project, and the BugZilla database is public, other
developers can also work on this phase of the project.  

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* Current Status of Project

** HIG Understanding

This portion of the project is basically completed.  I have looked at
the HIG and its reccommendations, and discussed some of them with the
GNOME Usability team.

** Evaluation

This portion is mostly done.  I have filed a large number of bugs on
the subject of the HIG in the AbiWord Bugzilla database.  They can be
seen by looking at Bug #4142 [1] and its dependencies, which are all
the bugs that I have filed on the subject.  

I have asked the GNOME Usability team for a review, but they have not
yet responded.  The email was CCed to the class mailing list.  

** Bug Fixing

This portion is still in progress.  I have fixed some bugs, such as
4144 and 4146, and others have fixed other bugs, such as 4145.
However, a number of bugs are still open.  I intend to continue
working on fixing these.  

[1] http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4142