Hi, My actual opinion is not politically correct, so I’ll try to stick to constructive comments.
Jeremias Maerki wrote:
On a serious note (as opposed to my outburst on fop-users), I think we should really discuss the FOP release plan which we haven't updated in a while. I would hate to see FOP in 0.x mode after 10 years of existence. Let's assume 0.20.5 was actually FOP 1.0, and FOP 0.95 was actually FOP 2.0.
Seen from today’s point of view, I very much agree with that. Actually the first release from the re-design branch (0.90 alpha 1) should have been called 1.0alpha, 0.91beta should have been called 1.0beta, 0.92beta 1.0RC and 0.93 1.0, or something like that.
How about calling the next version 2.009 (to be released in early 2009).
Hmmm... no. Too many digits after the dot IMO, and not meaningful enough. If we were to release another version in, say, September, how would we call it? When the year is used in the versioning scheme, it’s usually in the form of year.month (Ubuntu, AMD Catalyst drivers, etc.). Moreover, it can only puzzle users I think. We’ve used <1.0 version numbers for all those years, we’ve started a whole series of 0.9x releases, and all of a sudden we jump to >2.0?! With no significant changes from 0.95, moreover. They will wonder what is that revolution that they missed and that justifies such a jump. The ‘least worse’ way to stop the <1.0 curse, IMO, is to actually call the next release 1.0, with the following message: the re-design branch has been worked on for quite some time now, it brings many new features and improvements compared to the old 0.20.5; it’s considered stable enough to be used in production and 1.0 is used to acknowledge that. The work on changing IPD is likely to bring major changes to the layout engine, which will justify a 1.5 or 2.0 version. Once serious work has been done on optimization, a 2.5 or 3.0 can be released. Once significant features from XSL-FO 1.1 have been added, 3.5 or 4.0. And so on. After all, there are many open-source projects that have been around for years, and whose version numbers are still in 1.x or 2.x.x.
Skip 1.0 entirely since that would only let the expectations rise into the sky. FOP had a major redesign which warrants at least a version jump of one major version. Not calling it 2.0 means it's not a first release from a fresh development branch. That will carry the message along that FOP is stable and usable in a productive environment. Hell, it's used in production by so many people for so many years. OhpointXitis is really bad. I know we still have about one item left on our pre-1.0 list: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/ReleasePlanning But that's still going to take a while. I want to revisit this list and see what today's view is. Flame away. Jeremias Maerki
Vincent
