Re: Requesting Approval of Release notes general structure

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Hi!

I'm going to mix the quotes to keep it short:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:10:08 +0100
Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org> wrote:

> I think that this is a better approach.
>
> 2.16: Eye candy (although I personally would have preferred
> performance) 2.18: Developer suite (although we still have a good
> chance to talk about performance)
> 2.20: whatever is the top-billing feature in 2.20
>
> The point is, the journalists writing the GNOME release articles will
> have to come up with the headline anyway - we should give it to them.


There's seems to be a misunderstanding. The _complete_ structure as I
wanted it is as follows:

 (1) Front page headline/promotion
 (2) Feature improvements
 (3) Usability improvements
 (4) Performance improvements
 (5) Internationalization improvements
 (6) Accessibility improvements
 (7) Backend improvements

The (1) headline will change every release, depending on what we say
is the most interesting news. This is what journalists will hopefully
pick for their own stories.

The headlines (2) to (7) should remain stable. They might be varied
slightly every release, sometimes we may combine two into one if
there's not enought material, or we may drop one or two completely if
there's absolutely nothing to say. However, they should repeated in
every release notes if possible.

You see, everythink is taken care of.

> Saying that GNOME is a developer suite, development platform and basic
> desktop environment for Unix and GNU/Linux is not a bad idea.

Of course, not. As long as it's just that. Such a sentence should be
inserted somewhere on the first page, (1). For an example, see the
initial draft of the last release notes: 

 http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointFifteen/ReleaseNotes/TwoSixteenFrontPromo

It said: "popular, multi-platform free desktop environment" and
"user-friendly environment that "just works" for everyday users, without
excess complexity or obscure features".

There's not even the need to make this a link because web users are
used to click somewhere on the header to get some initial description
or an 'About' section. Of course, we could have inserted a link to
the 'About' section.

However, that is different to the final version with a complete page
full of boring stuff.

> I am sensing anger here, and I don't understand why.

Hehe. What you heard was a little bit of frustration about dealing with
bike shed effects, again.

For example, your mail shows that you have not understood the release
notes structure but still you're willing to argue. In fact, your
mails show that you have no clue about marketing but that doesn't
prevent you from making comments. So, I'm not angry with you or
Gervais -- this is nothing personal; it's just frustrating to deal
with stuff like this. ;-)


Regards,
Claus