From: Dom Lachowicz (domlachowicz@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jan 18 2003 - 12:08:55 EST
AbiWord development has been progressing at a
marvelous clip and it's getting to the point where we
should put another big, fancy DOT-OH release out
there.
These past 8 months or so have seen an absolutely
tremendous amount of work. The 2.0 release will be
focussed on stabilizing and polishing those new
features, adding a few remaining features, and making
sure that we haven't regressed with regard to our
previous (1.0) feature set.
I said this before I released 1.0 - "This isn't to
mark the end of AbiWord development, it marks the
beginning." Well, 2.0 marks an incremental advancement
towards that mythical end. 2.0 will have bugs. 2.0
will lack features. This is to be expected. But we
promise to do our best to keep the nasties to a
minimum and incorporate missing features into future
releases.
Target Platforms:
Win32
*NIX (Linux, BSD, Solaris, XDarwin in particular)
QNX
If the MacOSX/Cocoa build progresses substantially, we
might have an "experimental" release of it. I will not
hold back the 2.0 release on MacOSX's behalf.
At present, I'm using bug 4468 as a tracker bug for
many of the issues that stand in the way of the 2.0
release. 4468 is not complete, but we'll work on
making it better represent how we want 2.0 to come
out.
Expected New Features (in addition to our current
feature set):
* Better mail merge UI
* Gnome Port (GnomePrint, GAL toolbar widgets, and the
Bonobo control only for now)
Expected polish/bugfix/improved 2.0 features:
* Tables (UI, interaction, imp/exp)
* Footnotes (needs imp/exp to RTF, DOC)
* Endnotes (make work again, imp/exp)
* Revisions (make work properly, imp/exp)
* BiDi
* XFT fonts on unix
* Unix printing
* OpenOffice importer/exporter
* Mail merge
* Barbarisms
Expected polish/bugfix/improvements over 1.0 features:
* HTML import/export
* GTK2 UI (ideally remove any deprecated
widgets/functions, make work on both GTK 2.0 and 2.2)
* XSL-FO import/export
* Spelling problems
* Help problems
* Crash problems
These lists are by no means meant to be exhaustive.
All suggestions should be sent to the list in a reply
to this email.
So, timelines...
This needs to be a delicate balance between a set
schedule and a "release it when it's ready"
mentatlity.
Tentatively, I'm thinking that we should AIM to have
2.0 out by May 1st, 2003.
Jan 22: 1.1.3 release. Soft feature freeze. No
features not listed above allowed in.
February 22: 2.0alpha1 release.
March 1: Hard feature freeze (1 1/2 months for above
feature work). Only polish and bugfixes on above "New"
features allowed. Anything missing punted to beyond
2.0. 2.0beta1 release. 2 months until release.
March 30: String and documentation freeze.
Translations accepted, no new en-US. 2.0beta2 release.
April 6: 2.0beta3 release
April 13: 2.0rc1 release
April 20: No more strings, even translated ones (3
weeks from March 30). 2.0rc2 release
April 27: Tree frozen. No more commits except for HUGE
problems, trivial provably non-regression-causing, or
build fixes.
May 1: 2.0 released, with various source and binary
packages available.
May 5, 2003: Partying stopped, hangovers getting
(marginally) better.
All commits in the "RC" period (April 13->May 1) need
to be authorized by myself and/or Martin. No
exceptions. Patches are to be sent to the list in 'cvs
diff -u' format.
All commits from March 1->May 1 may not break the tree
intentionally. Stub functionality on alternate
platforms, or coordinate your work with the other
platform maintainers.
There will be nightly builds and testing thereof
during the "RC" period. KJD has win32 nightlies, Marc
has Linux RPMs from his tinderbox.
Matthew Craig is working on a regression and unit test
suite. Some of us have helped him with it so far. He's
rounded up some testers and seems to be off to a good
start.
We'll need help from all involved during these
upcoming months.
We'll need patience from the developers, as I know
you'll all be itching to work on new features and
hating the seemingly endless bugfixing. Please do your
best to squash bugs. I know better than anyone how
much the 1.0 process hurt. Hopefully this will be less
painful. But be prepared to endure it again.
We'll need help from the users. We'll need people to
scour bugzilla, fill in the twiki, fill up bugzilla
with new bugs, work on the testsuite.
Please respond to this mail with thoughts and ideas.
I'd write more here, but my hands hurt.
Cheers,
Dom
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