Hi, I'd like to inform you about our plans for the GIMP 2.0 release. First of all, Mitch and me are not willing to raise the 2.0 versus 1.4 discussion again. Both sides have expressed their arguments. We took quite some time to think about all of them and to reconsider our decision. We came to the point that it should be called 2.0. It's just a number, so please, before you start the discussion again, think twice if it's worth it. The plan is to rename the translation domains and the one file that refers to 1.4, gimp-1.4.m4 to gimp-2.0.m4 this weekend, then release 1.3.17. This means that plug-ins using autoconf/automake will need to use AM_PATH_GIMP_2_0. Since we have also done a few changes to the libgimp API since 1.3.16, plug-in authors will have to tweak their code for 1.3.17 anyway. Originally we wanted to get GIMP 2.0 out at GimpCon. Since that is actually in three weeks, we will definitely not make it but I am still optimistic that we will manage to feature-freeze at the Camp and do something that we can call a 2.0 prerelease. Perhaps we will need to declare one or two missing features as bugs but basically the release made at GimpCon should have everything that GIMP 2.0 will have. After the prerelease we will need some time to fix remaining bugs and probably also to polish some things such as documentation. We should however try not to do major string changes past this point to give the translators a chance to get the translations into good shape for the 2.0.0 release. Speaking of documentation, it would really be a shame if we had to ship 2.0 w/o any help pages. I would call this a bug and we should really try to get it fixed. The gimp-help2 module in CVS contains some work which was started quite a while ago but since it has been abandoned, the most reasonable approach at this point seems to be try to bring the 1.2 help pages uptodate for 2.0. Any volunteers for this? Actually I hate to declare such a time schedule as I just did. It seems to take away some of the fun from hacking on GIMP. But at some point we need to get a stable release out and IMO this should happen soon. Well, what will happen after the final 2.0.0 release? I think we should try to target a quick 2.2 release with only minor feature improvements but this is really something that I would want to discuss at the camp... Sven
