** Preparing for the 0.96 release **

[nicholasbs]

The roadmap lists the 0.96 release as being scheduled for November 11. I'd like to make a few proposals for this release.

* Merge trunk and new-dialogs. The new-dialogs branch is where most of the recent development has taken place, and it's progressed to a relatively stable place. There are still some plugins that need to be converted, but most of the major ones have been updated, and the ones that have not been updated should continue to work as they did before.

* Ticket cleanup. It seems unlikely that all the tickets currently marked for 0.96 will or should be closed before the next release. Some cleanup/reclassification would make it easier to tell how much needs to be done for 0.96.

* I think a mailing list would greatly improve communications among Xinha developers and users. If it's a hassle to put one up on Xinha.org, I'd be happy to maintain it here: http://www.openplans.org/projects/xinha/lists/xinha-discussion Assuming I don't hear any objections, I plan to start work on the above in the next couple of days. The work Ray has done on the new dialog system is excellent, and I think getting a release out that includes those improvements will greatly improve the overall Xinha user experience. I know it'll be much appreciated by the folks at my company who use Xinha, and I'm sure the same can be said for many others as well.

Thanks,

-Nicholas

[ray]

Replying to nicholasbs:

* Merge trunk and new-dialogs.

If we do that I think we should push out a beta ASAP to have it tested a bit (I fear that a month is not even enough)
And I definitively want to have EFM/ImageManager converted, I'm thinking of a quick and rather dirty solution that involves putting the whole window into an iframe. Step 2 would be a nice rewrite using clean JS/AJAX instad of the messy PHP stuff we have now

Ticket cleanup. It seems unlikely that all the tickets currently marked for 0.96 will or should be closed before the next release.

Yup. that's obvious

I think a mailing list would greatly improve communications among Xinha developers and users

I think so, too. But looking at your list I feel some objections arising. Maybe it's because it's named "Xinha at TOPP", but I got the impression that it's a company-internal list and it feels for me that this is against Xinha's independent character. Couldn't we go for Google Groups or so? (Or at least simply rename it to Xinha)

The work Ray has done on the new dialog system is excellent

Thanks :)

[douglas]

I think a mailing list would greatly improve communications among Xinha developers and users

I think so, too. But looking at your list I feel some objections arising. Maybe it's because it's named "Xinha at TOPP", but I got the impression that it's a company-internal list and it feels for me that this is against Xinha's independent character. Couldn't we go for Google Groups or so? (Or at least simply rename it to Xinha)

Ray, I created the Xinha list originally and named it Xinha at TOPP because I didn't want to try and take over any Xinha discussion. We wanted to get input from the two of you before trying to create an official Xinha mailing list hosted somewhere else.

I'll create a project on the Open Plans website called Xinha for the mailing list, and update this ticket and the wiki to reference it. OpenPlans? runs on open source software, we're a non-profit just trying to contribute back, and there are tools for exporting the mailing list to mbox format, so hopefully it's a good location for a mailing list for the project.

[douglas]

I've created the mailing list at http://www.openplans.org/projects/xinha/lists/xinha-discussion and updated the description. You can either go to that URL, or send an email to xinha-discussion@… with subscribe in the subject line. I've updated the wiki with the information.

[nicholasbs]

Replying to ray:

Replying to nicholasbs:

* Merge trunk and new-dialogs.

If we do that I think we should push out a beta ASAP to have it tested a bit (I fear that a month is not even enough)
And I definitively want to have EFM/ImageManager converted, I'm thinking of a quick and rather dirty solution that involves putting the whole window into an iframe. Step 2 would be a nice rewrite using clean JS/AJAX instad of the messy PHP stuff we have now

This sounds good to me. I'm particularly in favor of your longer term suggestion of moving away from some of the ugly PHP stuff towards an ajax solution.

I think a mailing list would greatly improve communications among Xinha developers and users

I think so, too. But looking at your list I feel some objections arising. Maybe it's because it's named "Xinha at TOPP", but I got the impression that it's a company-internal list and it feels for me that this is against Xinha's independent character. Couldn't we go for Google Groups or so? (Or at least simply rename it to Xinha)

Yes, I definitely agree with your point about the naming, which I see Doug has already fixed. To elaborate on what Doug said, TOPP (our employer) is a non-profit that supports FOSS through and through; the last thing we want to do is turn Xinha into a corporate or one-company project (one of the reasons we chose Xinha was because it is an independent, community-based editor). Our goal is to contribute and become part of the Xinha community, not monopolize it.

[nicholasbs]

Since we came to consensus on all this, I'm closing this as fixed. Further discuss should take place on the mailing list