Re: 4.7 release notes early?

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 5:09 AM, Sebastian Kügler <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thursday, January 27, 2011 01:36:02 Vivek Prakash wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Albert Astals Cid <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > > A Dimecres, 26 de gener de 2011, Markus Slopianka va escriure:
> > > > Hi.
> > > > I was thinking we could start the 4.7 release notes early. They could
> > > then
> > > > also serve for the betas and RCs.
>
> Good call, Markus.
>
> > > And translators will have more than -5 seconds to translate.
>
> Indeed.
>
> > Let's use https://promo.notes-dev.kde.org/14 for it.  I've inserted the
> 4.6
> > announcements as a template.. as the 4.7 feature plan [1] is updated,
> let's
> > clear out the old information and replace it.
>
> Probably best is to start with empty categories: Plasma, Apps, Platform and
> fill in bullet points there, otherwise it gets too hard to distinguish new
> from 4.6 items (yes, can really be an issue, not know when exactly
> something
> was added). The text for the individual items needs to be written
> completely
> anyway, so I think it's better starting with a clean slate.
>

Just to take this a step further, can we brainstorm a bit about how to
improve the process of translating the "Feature Plan" page into the "Feature
Guide" and "Release Announcement" products that we create?  Right now the
process is tedious and there appears to be low motivation to get it done.  I
think if we make the tasks of creating these things easier then more people
will be willing to help.  So how do we do that?

Basically every time a new release comes out I always wonder the same few
questions:

* What changed from last time?
* Would an end user care about this change?  If so, why?

Just looking at the existing Feature Plan for 4.7 when I read a lot of
what's on there I think that maybe that's nice for helping developers keep
track of tasks, but much of what is there is not something users will care
about.  Conversely there are things that users *would* care about, but
they're explained in such a short cryptic manner that I have no idea what
the change really is without either emailing the developer or searching back
through posts on Planet KDE to see if they happened to blog about it or
something.

So how can we change the process so that we can not drive developers crazy
with extra work, but also make it easier on our team to figure out what is
really important about this new release so that we can clearly explain this
to our user community?  I have a couple of suggestions to get the ball
rolling, but I would really love some feedback from developers who may be
following this list as well as the rest of the promo group...

1) In the Feature Plan page we add a column called "Importance" and
developers can put either "major" or "minor" to signify if the feature is a
big deal.  Perhaps we don't even bother putting "minor" changes in the
Feature Guide, and those things are only mentioned in the full release notes
or tracked on the Feature Plan page? (I don't even know how release notes
are generated to be honest)

2) In the Feature Plan page we add a column called "Blog URL" which
developers could use to post a link to a blog entry that summarizes the
feature more verbosely, ideally explaining in that blog entry why users
should care about this feature

3) I already see in the etherpad doc that was created that there is some
question over whether Marble should get a spotlight mention in the main
release text.  Should we add a column to the Feature Plan page that allows
people to request consideration for such a mention?  That way if there are
doing some really huge overhaul and feel that special attention is deserved
for this we can be aware of it?

Ok, so that's just a few thoughts anyways...what do you all think?  And what
other suggestions do you have for improving this process?



> We also need to poke developers somewhat regularly to update the Feature
> Plan.
> I'll do that just now, in fact.
>

How do you go about doing that?  I've wondered more than once if there is
some master mailing list we could use to alert all the developer groups
about something...or do you have to mail individual lists or specific
people?

-Justin


>
> > [1] http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.7_Feature_Plan
>
> Cheers,
> --
> sebas
>
> http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
>
> _______________________________________________
> This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.
>
> Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set
> digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.
>

 
_______________________________________________
This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.

Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.