Introduction

I created document First.abw to serve as a test bed and test diary as I tested AbiWord 0.9.3(.1) under Win95. I thought it would be a useful approach as I was trying to create a real document, thus I tried to do things I would normally do in a real document.

At first things seemed quite messy. I had crashes and learned too many things the hard way. Now, after having gone through four drafts of this document, things are getting less messy, and I probably ought to retest before even posting this file, except maybe as a rough draft.

Some of the draft files will be available on the net at http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Test/AbiWordTestingOnWin32.

In addition to the reasons mentioned for taking this approach, another reason is that I don’t want to take the time to enter items into Bugzilla (or check for duplicate items) at this point. When some one else reads this list, they might be able to tell me off the top of their heads which items do and which don’t need to be added to Bugzilla, or do that for specific items. (That is also one reason the items are numbered on this list.)

Aside: It will become clear that a lot of my testing is focused on styles. I tried to format this entire document using styles.

In my early testing with First.abw, I tried to work with the “as-shipped” defaults for all settings including font sizes and styles. (Even thought this 12 point font is rather difficult to read on my 17" screen, 800x600, 96 dpi font sizes according to Windows.) Later I planned to try to create custom styles and modify the built-in styles.

At times I make comparisons to Word. All such comparisons, unless specified otherwise, are to Word97. I’ve never used Word2000.

Observations

Crash with Heading Styles

AbiWord crashes after applying “Chapter Heading 1“ style, followed by “Numbered Heading 1" style to normal text. (Contrary to my initial report, this now happens consistently, not just on the first run after an install -- I must have been doing something different on the subsequent runs.)

List of Miscellaneous New Items

As mentioned above, I created First.abw, then decided to summarize the rambling blow-by-blow descriptions in FirstSum.abw. I was hoping not to run into too many new problems. Unfortunately, I ran into these which I am simply trying to list for now. Later, if it appears to be worthwhile, I will try to recreate these problems and create a blow-by-blow description of how to recreate the problems.

If the cursor is at the beginning of a plain text line (last line of a paragraph) and the next paragraph is a heading, and you press the down arrow, the cursor goes to the beginning of the line after the heading. You have to press the up arrow to get to the beginning of the heading line.

It is fairly easy to get into a position where the text of a numbered heading is positioned one space after the number instead of one tab after the number. AFAIK, I moved to a blank paragraph, selected "Numbered Heading 2“, and started typing “List of Misc...”. Was there a space on that line prior to starting? Some other problem? Maybe as a usability feature we want to check such headings -- if there is no real text on the line (but maybe some whitespace), maybe the whitespace should be cleared and the cursor positioned after the tab. (See next item -- was the space there by accident or intention?)

Under certain circumstances (I’ll try to mention them below, then describe them better later), you can get to a point where the number on a numbered heading has been deleted and your cursor is positioned at the beginning of the line. At that point, if you press delete, it appears nothing is deleted. The next press of the delete key deletes the tab, and the next one starts deleting text. Seems weird.

Certain sequences of events make the number on a numbered heading disappear. (Need to try to list and describe -- things like hitting enter on a blank paragraph before the heading, deleting a blank paragraph before the heading, maybe others. (These descriptions are not accurate so far.))

Certain events leave “cursor dirt”, either temporarily or permanently. After a spelling error is corrected, sometimes when inserting lines (but only with View --> Paragraphs on?), occasionally the bottom of the cursor leaves a mark.

Most of this list I’m trying to reconstruct from things I wrote before the second crash -- I will have to come back and attempt to recreate the events.

Item 11 originally contained two bulleted list items. I attempted to separate them into two items by positioning the cursor at the end of the first item, then hitting enter. I then selected the empty bullet and attempted to apply the Numbered Heading 2 style. The style seemed to be applied partially to both it and the next paragraph -- the empty bullet did change to a number, bold face type, etc., but the next paragraph also converted to bold face type, etc. I then inserted the phrase “Test Heading” and left the rest of item 11 alone, just to preserve the occurrence. (Ahh, but I could just save, then try splitting the item apart, and, if the problem is not preserved, go back to the saved copy.)

See previous item. This was the second occurrence of this, so it is at least somewhat repeatable. The first time I then did something else which caused AbiWord to crash. I’m not sure I remember exactly what I did. I might have selected a heading and applied a new style to it, but I’m not really sure. (It was on this crash that I learned Auto Save was not working even though it had been working the previous evening.)

If a blank paragraph is followed by a Numbered Heading 1 paragraph, and the blank paragraph is deleted, the number is deleted from the numbered heading. Same behavior occurs with Section Heading 1 paragraphs, and probably for Chapter Heading 1, and the 2nd and 3rd levels of each of these.

Applying Heading 1 Style After Chapter Heading 1 Style

When I have a heading with the “Chapter Heading 1" style and then apply the “Heading 1" style, AbiWord does not crash, but (1) the “Chapter 1" remains (not nice, but maybe this is the intended behavior?), and (2) the space between “Chapter 1" and “test” increases (also not nice -- but probably irrelevant if the first behavior is changed). Both before and after the change, the character between “Chapter 1" and “test” is a tab, but “test” moves from the (default) tab stop at 1" to the stop at 1.5“. (Re: the idea that the first part of this problem may be the intended behavior: I have a vague recollection that the “Normal Clean” style was intended to be the style you applied to clean up certain formats. Notes: (1) That doesn’t work, and (2) that shouldn’t be necessary. (It’s not necessary in Word97.)

Chapter 1 Changed to Greek Letters

As I was experimenting re the previous item, “Chapter 1" disappeared and was replaced by the Greek letters you see below. I haven’t tried to repeat this. Maybe I hit some odd shortcut key by accident? (And, the te of test was not visible until some other repaint occurred, and the number is gone(?).)

test

Can’t Copy and Paste Numbered Heading Prefixes

This is probably intentional and may be appropriate behavior, it’s just a little different than the behavior in Word. Something I want to think about some more.

I can’t copy and paste those Greek letters (or “Chapter” in a chapter heading, and probably not “Section” in a section heading). It is not quite like the similar word97 behavior where you can’t even select the leading characters of an automatically numbered style (but I probably have to double check that behavior to describe it completely correctly).

<End> Moves Cursor to Beginning of Next Line

If I insert a quote (double or single) before or after a word anywhere in a line (maybe not the last line of a multi-line paragraph), and then press <end>, the cursor moves to the beginning of the next line instead of the end of the current line. (This is consistently repeatable.) When I insert the quote into the middle of a word, or insert another character (the letter “i”), <end> works as expected.

Files do not immediately appear on the MRU list

When I start a file, name it, and save it, it does not appear on the MRU file list.

If I close the file, and the open the file, it appears on the MRU list.

If a crash occurs (like the one described with the style combo box) before I’ve closed and reopened the file, when I open AbiWord the next time, the file is not on the MRU list.

Need More Styles (initially a note to myself)

Note to myself: I need to create an indented paragraph style (at least for myself) to serve as a continuation paragraph within a bulleted list. (I was going to make each different “anomaly” a separate bullet, with continuation paragraphs as necessary. Currently I’m creating a separate heading for each, as a workaround until I do that. (But actually, it seems to work quite nice.) I also need second and third level bulleted and other lists (with larger indent).)

Other Things to Consider About Styles

Other things to consider include whether we want all those built in bulleted styles (heart, etc.) to appear on the combo box, or whether we want:

one or two bulleted styles that can be customized by choosing the bulleted character (a little more like Word, but actually a step beyond if more than one is provided),

and/or

the feature of allowing the style combo box to only display only styles used in the current document or in the current style sheet (instead of all built-in styles).

Bullet Disappears but Style Remains “Bullet List”

When I hit enter twice after a bulleted paragraph, after the second <enter>, the bullet disappears from both new paragraphs, but the style is still listed as “Bullet List”. (This behavior is pretty much the same as Word97, but it never seemed correct -- I think you should either continue to get bullets, or the style name should change to reflect the lack of bullets (i.e., “Normal).)

At least sometimes if I move the cursor up twice and then back down, the correct named style is displayed.

Applying “Normal Clean” Changes Bullet to a Vertical Bar

If the style of a paragraph is “Bullet List”, and I apply “Normal” or “Normal Clean”, the round bullet switches to a thick vertical bar. (Sort of like a shorter version of | in bold face -- ahha, I just noticed that it is the symbol that introduces “Block Text” -- now I guess I know what “Block Text”, but that is sort of surprising as well.)

Bulleted Paragraph shows up as “Normal” style

Due to some combination of circumstances (simple -- i.e., not a complicated, complex sequence of steps -- see FirstSum.abw) I managed to create a good looking bulleted paragraph whose style shows up as “Normal”.

Sometimes Difficult to Get a Normal Paragraph in the Midst of a Bulleted List

Note: I’m had a difficult a time getting a plain “Normal” paragraph in the “midst” of a bulleted list. Finally resorted to copying a plain paragraph from elsewhere in the list, but then, after a few “faux pax"s, it became an indented paragraph. How did this happen? OK, I checked Format --> Paragraph -- the left indent is now set to 0.5" -- I never fooled with it, only applied various styles. Somehow that seemed to get set as a side effect of one of the style changes.

“Numbered Heading 2" Style Started Creating a Bold Bulleted Heading

Ok, now “Numbered Heading 2" seems to be consistently creating a bold heading with a bullet. (And, in this case, smart quotes did not work.) (Maybe this was due to “contamination” of the styles after so much fooling around? It has since stopped.)

Normal Clean does not reset all to Normal

I left the sequence of events here, I got too lazy to summarize it.

I started another new paragraph (this one) to experiment with. It starts out with “Normal” style, and appears to be normal. I apply the “Bullet List" style. (Aside: even the change on this fairly short paragraph is fairly slow, with a lot of repainting.) Now I apply the “Normal” style, and I have the “Block Text” like thing -- bulleted with the short, bold vertical bar. Now, for kicks, I hit enter to start a new paragraph.

Same style. (Oops, just noticed that already, this style and the previous one are labeled “Normal" but are really bulleted with the short, bold vertical bar.) Ok, now I apply “Bullet List” style to this again. That takes me back to the round bullet and the properly named style. Now I apply “Normal Clean”. Similarly, I am back to a bulleted item with the short, bold vertical bar, but the paragraph style is labeled “Normal Clean”.

So, I was going to question my mind-set of how styles should behave (and I might still), but I thought Normal Clean, at least (if no other style), would set all style parameters back to those for “Normal”. So, I think this much, at least, is a bug.

Spell check problems

Some words are incorrect or missing from the dictionary:

bulleted (not a word?)

AbiWord

Hmm, that’s weird (there goes the i before e except after c rule). AbiWord shows up as misspelled in this sentence (and in an earlier sentence). It also showed up misspelled on the above list until I added mindset and hit return (now deleted -- I guess it’s mind-set) -- now it shows OK on the list, but still misspelled in this paragraph (and above).

Another weird thing, is almost just the opposite, mindset shows up misspelled on the list and in this paragraph, but in the previous paragraph where I used mind-set (starts with “So, I was going to question my mindset”) the red line underneath has turned into a series of red dots, almost like “cursor dirt” typically left behind when a word is corrected and before the entire paragraph is redrawn (or something happens to clean up the cursor dirt). As it happens, in that previous paragraph, the letter directly under the first letter of mindset is “l” (the first letter of least). Is that what causes the described appearance? (This problem seems to come and go -- when I copied and pasted the first part of that paragraph to insert it in the sentence earlier in this paragraph, something happened to repaint the paragraph, and it looked OK. I just went back to look again, and apparently something else repainted the paragraph again, and it’s back to the way it was.)

Mouse Selection Left to Right Doesn’t Work with Headings

See the chapter headings below. If I position the mouse pointer to the left of chapter 1, press the left mouse button, and try to swipe right and down to select all three headings, none are selected (that’s weird, try that on a normal or bulleted paragraph -- the selection does work). If I position the cursor in front of or within the first “test”, the same “gesture” selects test on that line, and the next two headings (completely). If I go to the third heading, position the mouse pointer after the test, press the left mouse button, and swipe left and up, all three headings are selected.

test

test

test

test

Sometimes hitting enter twice does not stop the bullets

I did something, and then hitting <enter> twice after a bulleted paragraph no longer made the bullets disappear (all subsequent paragraphs had bullets). I suspect what I did was select “Bullet List” on a blank normal paragraph, and it somehow switched me to something like “Bullet List” mode. (Interesting (but maybe not so good?).)

Default for numbering should be hierarchical style

Default for numbering should be hierarchical style, like 1.1.1.

Auto Save

I want to pay attention to Auto Save and setting preferences:

If you make a change to the built-in preferences, are they preserved or does something change them, perhaps when a file is saved or AbiWord is closed?

Is a file saved at the Auto Save interval whether it is dirty or not?