Hi folks, I think that October 1st is extremely ambitious (read stupid) for a *stable* release date. Things we need to get together (just from our current codebase):
A. 1) Endnotes don't work properly 2) Footnotes don't work at all 3) Tables have many bugs and RFEs, not the least of which are: 3.a) Import/Export RTF 3.b) Import MSWord 3.c) Import/Export XHTML 3.d) Nested tables 3.e) Lots of unimplemented menu commands 3.f) Needs lots of UI polish 4) GTK2 branch will have just been merged. It still needs *massive* amounts of work, but nothing insurmountable. Most importantly, needs massive amounts of regression testing. 5) Revisions and hidden text don't work entirely properly. I'll file bugs on this as needed. 6) Windows printing bug B. Possibly planned things (in my order of importance): 1) XHTML clipboard support 2) Use libgsf for all input/output filters 3) use gnome-print for *all* of our printing needs. Chema is almost (99%) finished removing any gnome dependencies from it and he is making it use FontConfig as its backend. We'll get superb printing support to PS, PrintPreview, faxes, emails, printers. I plan on coding SVG and Pixbuf backends for this too. 4) Use libegg for GTK+ menus 5) Bonobo 6) SVG support, ideally XP but platform-specific plugins also possible C. 1) Many/Most of the 820 or so bugs lying around in bugzilla (some of which cover "A" and "B" items, but many of which don't) IMO, my action items 1-4 are of paramount importance, and #5 should work at least as well as it did in 1.0.2 Remember that the primary reason that 1.0.[12] were such successes was that we had the benefit of several long pre releases (0.7, 0.9). During this time, lots of people downloaded Abi and banged on it, filed lots of bugreports, wishlist items, ... We'd be *insanely stupid* not to go through a similar series or two of unstable, unsupported releases this time around. I'm not saying that we should wait 2 years to release. I'm very much in favor of a 1.1.1 build released around October with hopefully all of my "A" action items followed by several more 1.1.x releases. We'd follow that up with a short 1.3 series which handled most of my "B" items, and then get to 2.0. "C" items should be integrated all of the time. Note that my "A," "B," and "C" items don't have to get implemented on necessarily this strict a timetable or in this order. There is room for mingling and shuffling. I'd realistically hope for a 2.0 no earlier than February 1 and no later than April 15, and it would be unlikely that even this release would cover 100% of my above listed items. FWIW, the next release should be called 2.0. Also, FWIW, I've spent a good part of my last week working on libgsf, librsvg, and I'm about to start working on gnome-print, in case you've been wondering what I've been up to. My personal plans are to target the "B" set inside of AbiWord in a few weeks after the necessary amounts of work are completed in the parent libraries and restart my work on Abi's GTK2 port. Dom
