*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.