AbiWord Roadmap

Last updated: 31 May 1999, the current tarball is 0.7.9
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/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 Field
DLOG: Options, with tabs for various kinds of options
DLOG: goto
Word Export
HTML import (sam@uchicago.edu)
Other

Notable Bugs
bug: spaces should not wrap to the beginning of a line (362) (eric@abisource.com)

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.
show invisibles
lists
horizontal rules
tabs: center, right
View/Toolbars
View/Status Bar
Context menu for images
Context cursors for image
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.
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.
Inline marks for bookmarks, TOC, index, etc. (julian.morrison@virgin.net)
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.