First, some personal news:  my work has taken some dramatic shifts
toward the client side in the last year.  This makes it
nigh-impossible to use work time for Velocity development.   So, i
have lacked time to finish VelocityTools 2 (among other things), and i
don't foresee much change in this situation in the future.  This is
doubly so because everything is good enough for now, great even.  It's
remarkable to remember how much Velocity has progressed in the last 9
years.  For my purpose, Engine and Tools don't have any remaining pain
points.  There are features and improvements i'd still enjoy working
on, but i simply can't manage the time.  More and more of my open
source time (both work and free) is occupied with jQuery and friends.

That said, i am fairly determined to push out Engine 1.7 final and
Tools 2.0 final one way or another.   My hope is that 1.7 will be the
last major 1.x release of Engine, freeing our newer blood (Byron and
Jarkko et al) to set and execute visions for 2.0 without all the
encumbrances of the past (old jdks, backwards compatibility, my
stubborn opinions and such :).

Tools 2.0 has been languishing in beta due to unfinished docs.   No
one has stepped up to help and really the docs aren't that bad, so i'm
done with that.  Expect a CFV for Tools 2.0 final soon.  Object
quickly if you have other ideas. :)

In other Tools news, there are a few unpublished tools i've been
sitting on that are in various states of completion/polish.  I had
intended them to be part of a 2.1 release, but that now feels too far
away to consider.   As such, i intend to add them to 2.0, while
somehow denoting them as "beta" level.   Really, we are overdue for a
means of classifying tools, as they all have various levels of support
and polish.   Obviously, i will mention their status in their docs and
leave them out of the default tools.xml files, but i was wondering if
i should take it further.  Perhaps, by putting them in a "beta"
package like org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.beta.FooTool?  Any
thoughts on this?

Anyhow, i will continue to be on the lists (even if my answers are
more delayed than before) and will certainly be able to help walk
people through release processes and such, but in general, i am less
available than before.  Jarkko, this especially means that we need to
finalize your committer status so you can commit your own patches.

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