Hi :) I think we risk causing more confusion by changing it. Answering this is going to be tricky because it's a bit circular.
The term "branch" is used by many other OpenSource projects (such as Debian). Debian and others have "development" branch and stable branch which is pretty much how the LO releases seem to have worked out. "Version" tends to mean an individual release and both version and release are even often used interchangeably for alpha, beta, rc and final errr release of a minor sub-point release. In practice the 3.4.x has often been found to be much less stable but has the advantage of more features and bigger improvements (better compatibility with MSO was a nice surprise). The 3.3.x branch has stayed closer to OOo with smaller and just incremental changes but much less hassle in the Users List and fewer unexpected problems (just most of the old ones which are already known about and often fixed in the 3.4.x). I think the 3.4.4 release was the first in that branch that combined the advantages of both branches in much the same way that Ubuntu LTSes work or at least that seemed to be the plan. The devs have been very unclear about what the different branches and releases were for. They seem to want everyone to constantly upgrade and do beta-testing all the time and that is not practical for many. Ubuntu make it very clear by using the label "LTS" but in LO it has been very unclear because the devs don't want to use such a label. Everyone should just magically know, apparently. The devs seem very "touchy" about it so asking them just creates an argument because of course everyone should pay as much attention to the minutiae of what they do and understand their work as thoroughly as they do. Also claims made by the devs have often not panned out. What they call stable has had unexpected regressions or unexpected problems, which is not really a surprise to the rest of us that notice a lot of rapid progress and hard-work which inevitably means slight hiccups. They are allegedly aiming for the LTS style but in practice it's been the development branch vs stable branch. The 3.4.x branch seems to have settled down with the last release and the 3.5.x branch seems to have a lot more development so at a guess i think people are beginning to find the 3.4.x is also stable now. Much as the devs might like to claim the 3.5.0 is stable i really think all those extra and new features are likely to run into more problems than they anticipate so lets just think of the 3.5.x as development branch and both of 3.3.x & 3.4.x as stable branches now. This might sound as tho i hate change and progress and really hate the devs but that is far from true. I think they do an awesome job. LibreOffice is an excellent product which often out-performs MS Office. The progress that is made in such short time-frames is incredible. It's just that "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". I really like omelette but sometimes it's faster, easier and less messy to just have an egg. The docs team is the best team in TDF imo but the devs are great too. Regards from Tom :) --- On Thu, 12/1/12, Jean Weber <[email protected]> wrote: From: Jean Weber <[email protected]> Subject: [libreoffice-documentation] Ping Tom: headings in table of LO docs on wiki To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, 12 January, 2012, 4:19 Tom: On page http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications was it you who added the designation "(stable)" to the 3.3.x column? But isn't v3.4.x "stable" as well? If so, shouldn't we remove "(stable)" from the 3.3.x column as being a bit misleading? Or amend it in some way? Also, the word "branch" seems odd to me. I know what you mean, but I'm wondering if the term might be confusing, and indeed if it's needed at all. The headings could be, for example, "Version 3.3.x" and "Version 3.4.x" or some such. Yes, I know, it's a wiki, so I could just change it, but I thought I'd ask first in case there was some reason that I'm missing for doing it the way it is now. --Jean -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
