Subject: Re: The next release?
From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Oct 18 2000 - 08:36:16 CDT
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Thomas Fletcher wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> > We've accumulated a lot of neat features very quickly. I was
> > wondering what peoples opinions are on a quick release in about 2 weeks
> > time at the beginning of November using Sam's new Binary Release scheme?
>
> I think that this is a good idea, though I would also like to work to
> make all of the platforms "at par" as much as possible. Part of this
> is working to get all of the dialog changes integrated so that all
> of the dialogs are layed out the same on all platforms. I can't do
> this without accurate screenshots (not to mention the fact that I
> have to update and fix all of the QNX png screenshots).
I'll check the gtk dialogs against the CVS *.png's and update those that
don't match. I think they're all pretty close though.
> Does anyone else think that it might be handy to have a "master"
> platform directory in the shots/[xp|wp] directories that would
> contain the most recent dialog layout screenshots? It is either
> that or some ascii art layout. I'm more thinking out loud here
> about how this might be managed.
>
I thought we just updated CVS.
> Additionally does anyone else feel that perhaps having a rough
> schedule might be handy in guiding the direction. I mean more
> than just the feature matrix, but a rough 1 year timeline of
> milestones we would like to meet as a project.
I think this is a good idea. The current timeline is badly outdated. The
trouble is that it very hard to predict when some features will get added.
Never-the-less we can try and guess.
> This would give
> everyone involved a better idea of what kind of time frame they
> might be looking at to work on features. (For example, if I had
> known we were thinking about a new quick release I would have
> perhaps tracked some of the subtler dialog changes more closely).
It just occurred to me after the flurry of activity over thweekend that we
had a pretty impressive set of extra features and that we had a window of
opportunity before a major platform (Gnome) neccessarily goes unstable for
a while.
On the the hand we also now have some major bugs and it appears that the
Windows dialog for Lists will not be ready unless a Windows developer
other than Bruce Pearson steps up to implement it.
> If nothing else, let's set a ballpark figure for the next
> release so we can work towards cleaning/polishing/making things
> work for that time.
If we don't make the early November slot lets aim for version 0.90
(feature complete) for early December in time for the Gnome-extras
release.
To make that we need to finish off: Lists (basically done), Tabs
(basically done), Fields (give me two weeks), Fix the bugs due to the
mega-patch (spelling, printing and non-Latin-1 Font weirdnesses) plus:
Page Numbers
headers/footers
Page Setup
Styles
Borders and Shading
In addition to these features available for all platforms the Abi-Gnome
team (well Dom!) is working on additional goodies for the Gnome front end.
It would be nice to have auto-numbering of sections too but I don't think
we should hold up 0.90 for this.
Another wild card is to replace ispell with Kevin Atkinson's Aspell or
Pspell. So far no one has expressed interest in doing this.
I have ideas on how to do all these dialogs. If one of these dialogs
strikes the Fancy of a developer I'd be happy to offer advice. When fields
are done I'd like to work on Headers/Footers but that should not stop
someone else grabbing it.
Anyway getting all these done in 6 - 7 weeks will be a major challenge for
us.
Cheers
Martin
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