Re: [pdfmod] requesting your input on releases, etc

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Gabriel Burt<gabriel burt gmail com> wrote:
> Hey everybody,
>
> == Releases ==
> Anybody have an opinion or suggestion for how we could do releases?
> Time based, feature based, what version numbers, etc?
>
> I like having pretty regular releases, at least for another couple
> while translations roll in and build issues are worked out.  That
> could take us to 0.5, 0.6, maybe 0.7.

I agree that picking a specific set of simple goals, and reaching 1.0
quickly, is the best plan for now.

> A few things I'd want to see before a 1.0:
> * save tmp files to the XDG cache dir, and do a better job cleaning them up

Yes, I meant to file a bug about this, actually.

> * at least a week or two or string freeze for translators to get things updated
> * have no binaries in the repo or tarball (Hyena and poppler-sharp)

I expect you'll have to do this by copying the code directly into
PdfMod's repository, which seems fine to me.

> Any other features (including cropping/margins adjustment) would be
> nice to have, but I don't think should block it.  Does everybody think
> it's reasonable to have a 1.0 in a month or two?

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.  Other features are nice, but the
tool as-is is extremely useful with the simple, straight-forward
features that currently exist.  Stabilizing towards 1.0 seems the
obvious direction for now.

You might want to consider extensibility as a goal for 2.0, as I'm
sure people are going to want features that seem like clutter to you,
but are easiest to implement on top of what you've built.  People who
keep asking for viewing features from Evince could create their own
extensions implementing those features.

> == Other ==
> Any opinions on proposing pdfmod for inclusion in the GNOME desktop?
> Sandy, I'd be especially interested in your input on this.

I don't know.  You will have resistance on multiple fronts:
* Mono.
* Many will argue that the functionality should be part of Evince.
* I expect GNOME 2.30/3.0 will be a difficult cycle for introducing
new apps (but maybe not).

The proposal period for 2.30/3.0 is August 10 - October 26.

I don't think you have anything to lose by proposing it, besides the
soul-sucking prospect of being flamed for writing software.  ;-)
Besides that, it will at least be educational to find out what people
want from PdfMod (and from Evince).

All this assumes that you really want to follow the GNOME release
schedule, policies, freezes, etc.

Sandy