Hello Michael, On Mon, 1 Nov 1999, Michael J. Hammel wrote: > > I don't mind waiting around extra three months to make Gimp be the top of > > the line program when it comes to user friendly UI. I mean if we rush it > > really we can maybe release Gimp 1.2 in Jan 2000. So how much > > will it hurt to release it in Mars instead. > > Actually, it has a potentially big impact. The Gimp is one of the premiere > applications in the Linux world. A feature freeze was announced earlier in > an attempt to schedule a release date. You have quite a few book > publishers trying to do books on the Gimp and trying to time release of the > book with the product. End users associate published texts with the product, > especially when a printed document is not delivered with the product. > > I've had at leat 5 different publishers ask me about release dates. I've > been telling them late December to late January based on the feature > freeze and goals for the freeze - focus on bug fixing. UI problems can be > considered bugs, but the truth is they are a design issue. They do work, > just not as might be desired. Well I know that there are people trying to write books, I'm one of them. And sure my life would be a lot easier if we just said release Gimp 1.2 on Jan 21 2000. But I tend to look at the user and the community instead. I think the best goal is to make us (the developers and supporters of Gimp) and naturally all the users happy, than making one or two Publishers happy. > Additionally, UI changes were not part of the design specifications for the > 1.2 release. There was no design specifications (if I'm not totally out in the sky flying). We code and write etc. for the fun and joy not to do specifications (don't interpret me wrong design specifications is a very good thing most of the time). Cheers Olof
