Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] BUG: XaraLX crashes on Mandriva 2006

[Bryce Harrington <bryce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 01:13:44PM +0100, Frank Mertens wrote:
> I simply copied the gdb session. As far as I understand the bug originates
> from scim (chinese input method). I simply uninstalled scim and then XaraLX
> is working! When installing scim again, again same bug. Next I run inkscape
> with and without scim, but it works fine.

We also had a lot of troubles and crashes with scim and other i18n
aspects in Inkscape, but worked them out over the spam of a few releases
last year.

Here are some things worth testing; we found lots of bugs in inkscape
from these:

* Try using fonts particular to foreign languages (arabic, hebrew,
  chinese, kanji, sanskrit, etc.)

* Set your username to something using extended characters.  Start the
  program, try to set preferences.

* Start the program from a directory path that includes extended
  characters.  Try loading/saving files from this path.

* Launch the program with command line arguments that include extended
  characters.  

* For each input format the program supports, load a file that includes
  extended characters

* Test i18n in relation to extension/plugin programs (e.g., use extended
  characters for the exe file name or in its metadata if any).  Try
  running the program with these extensions and try using them.

The above six areas probably accounted for about 80% of the i18n bugs
we found and fixed (hundreds of bugs total).  We often found that the
same basic problem would reappear as new people used it with different
languages.

Despite the bugs, I actually found the i18n issues to be a really good
example of how well the Open Source processes can work.  Most of the
bugs were fairly easy to fix once found, so just working closely with
(thankfully patient) users to get them reported and the fixes verified
made the work go pretty quick.  In the end, this work has helped open
Inkscape to a much bigger audience worldwide.

Bryce