Thanks for the note, however knowing IBM I had hoped that one of the official goals was to help the development part of the community to get stabilized.
I acknowledge that it is important for IBM to get an output of invested energy/time/money, but I think IBM would benefit not only from features but also from the soft points of helping the community. that being said in response to your IBM HAT, but I do feel that you and other IBM Fellows still do a great job in getting the community to prosper. Jan. On 1 November 2012 17:45, <robert_w...@us.ibm.com> wrote: > A quick note, wearing my "IBM hat". > > We (IBM) have consulted with customers, internal users, other IBM product > teams, on what our (IBM's) development priorities should be for the next > AOO release. Obviously, we're not the only ones with priorities or > interests or opinions. We don't make AOO decisions by ourselves. But we > want to be transparent about what our own priorities are, for our > employees participating in the AOO community, and what they will be > focusing on. As we did with AOO 3.4.0 and 3.4.1, we'll be putting the > details onto the wiki over the next couple of weeks. You'll hear more at > ApacheCon, but I wanted you to hear it hear first. > > Our top priorities: > > -- Improve the install and deployment experience, especially by supporting > digital signatures on installs, and introducing a new incremental update > feature, so users are not required to download and install a full image > for just a minor update. > > -- A major UI enhancement, a sidebar framework for the editors, ported > over from Symphony, and including an API. If you recall, Symphony won > quite a lot of praise for its UI, and much of this was due to the sidebar > panel. I think we can make a good argument that this approach, say > compared to the MS Office "ribbon" is a better use of screen real-estate, > especially as we see more frequent use of wide screen displays. > > -- Improved Table of Contents in Writer > > -- Improved system integration on Windows and MacOS, including possible > adoption of "gestures". > > -- IAccessible2 bridge, ported over from Symphony, to improve > accessibility. This is a major effort, but very important. > > -- Closer integration of clipart and template libraries with user > experience. > > -- Update branding and visual styling, contemporary and compelling, fresh > and relevant. > > -- Social integration, allow our users to quickly and easily share their > thoughts in a way that compliment their commercial social behavior. > Explore the integration of consumer service-specific capabilities as well > as generic Share... actions. > > -- And many other smaller items > > Obviously the release date for this cannot be pinned down so early, and > releasing is PMC decision, not an IBM one. But we think that this work > could be completed and tested for a release in the March/April 2013 > time-frame. And the scope of the release might be significant enough to > warrant a "4.0" designation. > > In any case, we'll soon set up a page on the wiki to collect these items. > As always, I invite you to add your own priorities to the wiki, things > that you would like to work on. This could be a new feature. Or, if one > of the above items sound interesting to you, we always welcome help > designing and implementing these features. > > Regards, > > -Rob > > > >
