From: Alessandro Baretta (alex@baretta.com)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 16:57:24 EDT
Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Hi Allesandro,
>
> I've looked at your bug, and here's what I have to say on the subject:
>
> I think that you've confused paragraph alignment with character
> alignment. What I want you to do is:
Thanks, but, no, your help did not solve the problem.
Now let me state that I feel somewhat offended by the
standpoint taken by the developers who have gone through the
trouble of answering me. Don't misunderstand me: I
appreciate your work, and more so the time spent reading my
requests and answering my specific problems. Yet, all my
appreciation does not justify the the superficiality with
which my requests have been dismissed. I have been
repeatedly been addressed with a patronizing tone, and told
either to download a bidi enabled build or to turn on bidi
support. Both kinds of answers implicitly take for granted
that I am idiot, have not read that there exist separate
bidi enabled builds, have not gone through the trouble of
downloading the correct software, and finally have not taken
the time or effort to figure out how to activate the *one*
feature I am looking for in Abiword. Now, why should I not
be entitled to a little credit? I have filed a bug report
after *repeatedly* asking for feedback on the mailing list.
I would not file a blatantly invalid bug report on any piece
of software, if at all I can avoid it.
Now, Dom, you are very kind to answers me, but your answer
does not help much. I do not have the "abc", "cba", or "P"
buttons on the Extra Toolbar. Could this be due to the fact
that I use the following abiword package:
abiword-gnome-bidi-1.0.0-1.i686.rpm? Anyhow, I'll try
downloading the latest build later on tonight.
I take it for granted that the "cba" button activates
"right-to-left" typesetting, whereas "abc" turns on the
usual "left-to-right" style for european languages. If this
is the case, then I am able to turn on the "cba" feature
through the "Format->Paragraph...->Right-to-left document"
checkbox. Please, take notice of the fact that I am not
tampering with the text alignment pop-up menu, as you
hypothesized.
Now, weird behavior occurs: I believe you did not read the
bug report carefully enough. Let me print out a few tests
for you, so that you may realize just what happens. Let me
also reiterate that if screenshots are needed, I would be
more than glad to produce them.
I will continue using the "quick brown fox" example, but,
this time, I will not type spaces between words. This is
what I type:
>TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog.|
And this is what I get on the screen:
>|.goDzyaLehTrevOspmuJxoFnworBkciuQehT
Once again, I have used vertical bars to indicate the
position of the insertion caret. Up to this point, the
program seems to work correctly. But, as soon as I type a
space or any symbol other than a letter
_the_whole_sentece_gets_reversed_!
Here's the second test string:
>TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog. AnotherWord|
And this is what AbiWord produces on screen:
>TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog. A|droWrehton
Let me draw your attention to the fact that, after the first
string gets reversed on the screen, one more letter appears
in left-to-right mode (the capital "A"), then the following
letters revert to right-to-left mode and appear to the right
of the blinking caret. This produces the curious neologism:
AdroWrethon
1BA98765432
If the letters are read according to the ordering
established by the hexadecimal digits below them, you will
see they form the string "AnotherWord", as should be. But,
of course, the "A" should appear at the far right, as
opposed to the far left.
Now, Dom and company, I use word processors rarely. I am
more of a Tex-nician, to stick with Donald Knuth's jargon,
yet I am perfectly capable of using one. Your counterpart in
this discussion is an educated computer user, a Linux system
administrator, and a programmer, albeit typically I use
languages other than C/C++. I have given your team detailed
information concerning the weird behavior of AbiWord on my
system previously, and have not been given any credit in
this respect. Proof of this is that Dom has closed my bug
report with the usual "Worksforme" sort of comments. It is
not up to me to teach you or anybody that a piece of
software that works on one system is by no means guaranteed
to work anywhere else. And it definitely does not work at my
site, either under Linux or under Windows. I would be only
too glad to take part in a diagnostic effort to identify the
cause of the problem, but you cannot expect me to reverse
engineer your code and all the shared code you link to.
As I write I am downloading the latest version of Abiword. I
will soon follow up on this post to let you know if, by
chance, the problem is solved in the latest build.
Otherwise, I entreat you to earnestly look into this
problem, with the aid of all the feedback you might need
from me.
Very truly yours,
Alex Baretta
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