[bt-devel] Towards a 1.7 release - what is missing, who can help

[Martin Gruner]

Hi Eeli!

Am Donnerstag, 1. Mai 2008 schrieb Eeli Kaikkonen:
> First I want to say that I have bee a bit silent for a while for several
> reasons. I try to find time for BT again. I may tell more about my
> situation later if there's something important.

I'd be interested. Maybe you can send me a private mail, if you like.

> > 	* Bookshelf manager: complete new implementation (Eeli)
>
> I will fix some bugs. I have been thinking about the install destination
> path selection and would like to add a dialog page for that.
>
> > 	* Missing icons: collect missing icons
>
> I can do at least some of these. It just needs some time and
> inspiration.

Good.

> > 	* Search analysis: broken, I don't mind if we disable it for 1.7
>
> I would disable it. Last time I tested it crashed even without changing
> any code, I traced it to KDE libs. It's very easy to comment out the
> "Analyze Search" button from the UI.

I'll do that. Maybe I can even try to fix it.

> > 	* Anything else?
>
> Should we disable the keyboard shortcut configuration? It's broken and
> will only confuse users.

Yes, indeed.

> The old KDE bug where the paged dialog page selector shows only one item
> and can be browsed only with PageUp/PageDown has re-appeared with
> Kubuntu 8.04. 

Where can I see that? Please add to the wiki.

> We have to port the config dialog to our own new paged 
> dialog some day. Should we do it now or later? If later, there will be
> two kinds of paged dialogs which is not nice. Personally I want the
> public x.0 release to be ready for critical users and reviewers. Alpha
> and beta can have these kind of small deficiencies but .0 should be
> consistent.

You are right. Thing is that we also need to actually *have* a release. ;) So 
we should at least now agree that we will not implement new features and port 
KDE>QT only where it is neccessary. If it is, we should do it. Also, 
refactoring should only be done if it is very important or very simple.

> Drag and drop does not work atm in all situations. At least bookmarks
> need it.

Right.

> It's not fun to try and test all features but someone really should do
> it. Especially those things which are not visible: all shortcuts, drag
> and drop etc.

That is right too. Is there somebody who would be willing to test the 
application repeatedly, verifying all parts work as they should? That is an 
important task which requires dedication. If we find somebody, developers 
will have more time to work on the code.

> What about the Sword (filters) support? Is there something important to
> change?

I don't think so. We should be at the same level as 1.6.5 was. There is still 
much to improve, but that can come later.

> Maybe we should also notice those things which we have removed: shortcut
> config, possibly search analysis - what else?

I'll add these.

> One more thing. Will the final release number be 1.7 or 2.0?

IMO: 1.7

> Should we 
> move to 2.0 when we get rid of the KDE? 

We should have a 2.0 for whenever we go crossplatform and actually have at 
least a working windows installer (and possibly one for MacOS too).

> Could we have betas which are 
> ready for consumption and would be packaged for distros etc? 

We can have betas, of course. The distros probably won't package these, but if 
we can get binary packages, we can upload them to our sf site.


mg