This email is a proposal for a new test procedure of LyX releases.
I started to use LyX when LyX 1.2 came out. While working with it I
started to write my math manual which was not finished when LyX 1.3 was
released. I reworked my document to cover the new features of lyX 1.3
and discovered lots of new bugs that weren't in LyX 1.2.
Now the same happens for the switch from LyX 1.3 to LyX 1.4. In
consequence of this I propose to create a testing procedure LyX-releases
to avoid regressions and new introduced bugs.
Personally I use a test procedure for every new release of my
LyXWinInstaller. Derived from this here's my proposal for new releases
of LyX:
- Open a LyX-testfile with all major image formats:
JPG, GIF, PNG, SVG, PDF, PDF with crop box, EPS, WMF
and look if they are all correctly displayed inside LyX and in the
output, I could provide one
- Test Instant Preview for a document with formulas and this XY-pic
example: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/XY-pic
- Test references, citations (BibTeX and friends), and TOC, LOF, LOT
with a diploma or PHD thesis.
- Test scrolling and editing (copy/paste, etc.) with a long and big
document like a PHD thesis.
- Test math features using my math manual
- test spell checking, if possible with a document in two languages
- test search and replace
- test text and paragraph formatting (scriptsizes, formats like bold,
emphasize, etc., languages)
- test change tracking with a special testdocument; I think Michael Gerz
has one for his development
- test the table features, I wrote a manual for tables that could be
used for testing: http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/Tables
I mean that this could have avoided bugs we had in LyX 1.4, for example
the math bugs I described in the thread "major math bugs", the slowness
in large documents when scrolling and editing, the spellcheck and change
tracking issues, etc. .
The procedure above is for major releases. For bugfix releases it could
be shorter, related on the fields where bugs have been fixed to test
that the fixes don't have side effects.
regards Uwe
