Subject: Re: On the Road to version 1.0 [release schedule]
From: Dom Lachowicz (doml@appligent.com)
Date: Mon Dec 17 2001 - 11:18:39 CST
> > Translation freeze (both strings and documentation): January 18. We will
> > no longer accept new translations, documentation updates, or anything of
> > the sort after this date. NO EXCEPTIONS.
>
> I don't agree with this, specially because translations are usually not
> directly related to coding problems (only tool bars now) and because
> most translators don't do a line of code, so we're throwing efforts to
> the waste basket in here.
I disagree with you, and I'll explain why:
No, translations are not usually related to coding problems, but they
can cause other problems, and shipping 1.0 is a *lot* more than just
making sure that the code works.
We'll need to verify that:
1) Installers/Uninstallers ship and remove the proper strings,
documentation, etc... (remember your RPM fiasco with Martin? what about
non en-US translations working in plugin menus (martin just recently
fixed)?)
2) Installers/Uninstallers properly handle dictionaries, and make sure
that these dictionaries work on their respective platforms (remember the
*BSD and Debian dictionary bugs? What about en-BG dictionary being a
superset of en-US?)
3) That the translations don't get "garbled" at all in the GUI (bug
1422, others)
4) That the help system "just works" in various different languages (bug
1545)
5) Other things that I'm forgetting at the moment
I'm using the term "translation" here rather loosely to represent both
translation and localization issues. Many things can and will go wrong
and I'd like to keep those things at a minimum.
So I'm going to keep the hard translation freeze on for mid-January. I
feel that I'm on solid ground here. We're not throwing away anyone's
efforts, we're just *potentially* postponing someone's efforts in the
interest of the greater good (a 1.0 release that "just works").
> > AbiWord 0.99.2 aka 1.0 Beta 1: January 19, 2002. ~66% of 1.0 release
> > critical bugs should be fixed by this date.
> >
> > AbiWord 0.99.3 aka 1.0 Beta 2: January 23, 2002. ~75% of 1.0 release
> > critical bugs should be fixed by this date.
> >
> > AbiWord 0.99.4 aka 1.0 Pre 1 : January 27, 2002. ~85% of 1.0 release
> > critical bugs should be fixed by this date.
> >
> > AbiWord 1.0 final: January 31, 2002. Ideally, between 90% and 100% of
> > 1.0 targetted bugs would be here. Ideally NO KNOWN CRASHERS
>
> The above should be 0.99.5 for at least a couple of weeks.
> Better to lay low for a while than to launch a 1.0 suddenly with the
> risk of having 10%, which is still a lot, in the worst case.
I'm willing to let the final release candidate wait for a week before
announcing to protect against any "brown paper bag" type bugs.
Thanks,
Dom
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