[orca-list] Orca and the GNOME 2.28.0 schedule

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

This is just a quick note regarding the GNOME 2.28 schedule and what you 
can expect from us until 2.28 development slows down and we can look to 
2.29.  The schedule is here: http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyseven

Where we are right now is that 2.27.90 is out the door and there are 
only three more releases: 2.27.91 (26-Aug), 2.27.92 (09-Sep), and 2.28.0 
(23-Sep).  Here's the constraints we are under:

* API/ABI freeze.  No new APIs can be added.  Since Orca really isn't
  a library, this doesn't necessarily apply to Orca, but we do need
  to be diligent about not introducing incompatible changes with
  respect to things you can do in your user-settings.py and
  orca-customizations.py files as well as anything that can be
  done in a script.

* UI Freeze.  No more changes can be made to the Orca preferences UI.

* String changes (i.e., things that Orca brailles and speaks) can only
  be made until 24-Aug.  After that, they are frozen.

Thus, we're basically in bug fixing mode for the remainder of the 2.27.x 
and 2.28.x releases.  My personal criteria for bug fixes at this point 
is that they should be in the "high impact, low risk" category.

So, for those of you proposing new features and providing patches -- 
MANY MANY thanks for your work and please keep it up.  Please also don't 
be insulted if your new features or large patches are not being reviewed 
at the moment.  We will start evaluating them when we begin looking at 
work for Orca 2.29.x.

For those of you planning to give Orca v2.27.x a try, please do so and 
please report *bad* bugs that you find.  My recommendation is to build 
from the Orca git master sources, especially given the problem I 
mentioned with Orca v2.27.90 on Ubuntu (and which we've fixed in git 
master).

Will
(Orca project lead, GNOME a11y project lead)