Hi all, It's been a while since we've had anything like the status updates we had before Christmas, so here goes... We're in pre-release mode, as many of you might have noticed. gimp-2.0pre3 should be coming out this week, and will contain another 40 or so known bug fixes and lots of code clean-up we didn't know about to help 2.0 be even more stable than it would have been if we hadn't fixed the bugs. Of note are a number of fixes and features which have been added to the tiff plug-in in recent weeks, thanks to Andrej Kiselev, the libtiff maintainer. We've also had a modification in the behaviour of the zoom tool, as a result of a lively discussion between Simon Budig (of path tool fame) and Guillermo Romero. Mitch has, as usual, been doing great work. Among the changes he's made are to merge all shortcuts on image windows and docks together, so that the same shortcuts work regardless of whether the active window is the image window or another dock. He's also fixed a massive 17 of the 35 bug fixes since pre2 came out. Aside from that, there's lots of stuff happenning outside CVS too... the help team recently did a pre-release of the gimp-help-2 module, and it's looking very good. Roman, Daniel, Raymond, Niklas, Sven and everyone else who is working on the help right now are doing a great job. Sven and Wolfgang Hofer have also recently released a 2.0 snapshot of the GAP plug-in, which is lookign very nice indeed. At the moment, it has more or less all the functionality of the CinePaint frame editor, and then some. Recent additions like the bluebox plug-in and onionskin plug-in, as well as updates to the MovePath plug-in, have made this an excellent animation package. Dan Rogers is putting a lot of time into getting the GIMP Foundation up and running. This has been a tough job, which he has done more or less alone. We now need to start thinking about things like the eventual organisation fo the foundation, but having a foundation is a great step towards getting some funding for things like GUADEC. Dan and Calvin have also been talking quite a bit about how they see gegl moving forward to an eventual integration with the GIMP. There was a very lively thread on gegl-developers recently, which would be very interesting reading for all GIMP developers wondering about gegl. Unfortunately, the archives haven't yet caught up with the list, so those of you not subscribed to the list will have to wait a while. The commits have also accelerated recently in gegl - the bones of the image data structures is now present in CVS (much of it with dummy implementations, but the APIs are now available). Also, organisation plans for the GIMP conference are moving along nicely. It was decided to share the conference with GUADEC, which reduces the amount of organisation time to put in. Dan and I have started organising fundraising, and will soon be looking for more volunteers to get decent contacts for funding. The graphics thread of guadec is looking promising, and for those of you who are thinking of writing a paper, or making a presentation, the closing date for submissions is in 2 weeks time. So there we go... hoopefully a month from now, more or less, we will be celebrating the final release of the GIMP 2.0, and preparing for GUADEC/GIMPCon in June - start booking your flights soon, and see ye there! Cheers, Dave. -- David Neary, Lyon, France E-Mail: bolsh@xxxxxxxx