On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 2:56 PM, drew <d...@baseanswers.com> wrote: > ** > On Thu, 2011-12-29 at 15:19 -0800, kay.schenk wrote: > > > > On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 3:49 PM, drew <d...@baseanswers.com> wrote: > > On Thu, 2011-12-29 at 21:21 +0100, Andrea Pescetti wrote: > >> On 29/12/2011 drew wrote: > >> > During this migration period community developers also made great > >> > progress with the application code. Ariel Constenla-Haile, one of the > >> > community developers, generated binary packages, suitable for early > >> > testing purposes, from the current Apache OpenOffice code repository. > >> > Available for download at http://people.apache.org/~arielch/packages > >> > >> I wouldn't send out public announcements about Ariel's builds. The > >> interest is huge, and people might download them just out of curiosity > >> and damage their existing OpenOffice.org installation and extensions. > > > > Well, good point. I think it is important to be clear that the code (the > > application and therefore the 'thing' of real importance to users) is > > moving forward also however..not sure how to do that without something > > concrete to point to - as you say though it is something that can > > backfire badly, if people just install those files.. > > > >> It's probably better to announce, at due time, development builds that > >> won't interfere with the installed version (and ideally, not even with > >> the user profile if the BerkeleyDB removal has implications on that). > > > > Then maybe the announcement should just chronicle the items of interest: > > > > - Developer snapshot's are becoming available - that's Ariel's page as > > one > > - Daily builds are happening and there is a real location for those > > - others? > > > > and then point them to a page (website or wiki?) for those interested in > > getting in on the bleeding edge of testing, maybe? > > > > > it is a good little snippet of info. But there is so much more to > say, especially for an audience that we've haven't been > (re-)introduced to yet. Where to start? > > I wonder whether it would be worth reviving the OpenOffice Newsletter? > This was sent out to the old announce list. It was erratic toward > the end, but at one point I think it was coming out every month. > > Some examples: > > March 2011: > http://openoffice.org/projects/www/lists/announce/archive/2011-03/message/0 > > December 2010: > http://openoffice.org/projects/www/lists/announce/archive/2010-12/message/0 > > September 2010: > http://openoffice.org/projects/www/lists/announce/archive/2010-09/message/0 > > A format like that allows us to bundle a few small posts, news > clippings, announcements, etc., into a fuller package, maybe with > greater impact. > > For example, we could a series of these over the next few months: > > Newsletter #1: Intro to OpenOffice @ Apache. Announcements on > migration, copyleft-free build, start of test effort, links to blog, > mailing lists, migration status, announcement of pending retirement of > openoffice.org email addresses and lists, etc. > > Newsletter #2 (a month later): availability of test builds for 3.4 > (hopefully on Windows by then), how to help with test effort, reminder > on mailing list migration and mail forwarding shutdown. Gathering > proposals for AOO 4.0. > > Newsletter #3 -- coverage of 3.4 release, press clippings, etc. > > A newsletter could be put together on the wiki and then the > announcement can be a link to the online newsletter. > > > > > Alright - well, without worry about a schedule beyond this one... > > Another draft.. > > This is HTML and not sure what the list will do with it :-/ (is it a silly > question to ask if the new announce list accepts html? ) >
HTML is not very reliable in email. But maybe we could do this: Create the newsletter as a webpage, either on the wiki, or via mdtext or the blog. That has the full text of the newsletter. Then for the announce list, we just include the table of contents or the first paragraph or some other enticing lead-in, and then link to the full newsletter. That way we can also point users to the newsletter from Google+, Twitter, Facebook, support Forums, etc. One newsletter, but multiple paths to lead users to it. -Rob