A quick note, wearing my "IBM hat". We (IBM) have consulted with customers, internal users, other IBM product teams, on what our (IBM's) development priorities should be for the next AOO release. Obviously, we're not the only ones with priorities or interests or opinions. We don't make AOO decisions by ourselves. But we want to be transparent about what our own priorities are, for our employees participating in the AOO community, and what they will be focusing on. As we did with AOO 3.4.0 and 3.4.1, we'll be putting the details onto the wiki over the next couple of weeks. You'll hear more at ApacheCon, but I wanted you to hear it hear first.
Our top priorities: -- Improve the install and deployment experience, especially by supporting digital signatures on installs, and introducing a new incremental update feature, so users are not required to download and install a full image for just a minor update. -- A major UI enhancement, a sidebar framework for the editors, ported over from Symphony, and including an API. If you recall, Symphony won quite a lot of praise for its UI, and much of this was due to the sidebar panel. I think we can make a good argument that this approach, say compared to the MS Office "ribbon" is a better use of screen real-estate, especially as we see more frequent use of wide screen displays. -- Improved Table of Contents in Writer -- Improved system integration on Windows and MacOS, including possible adoption of "gestures". -- IAccessible2 bridge, ported over from Symphony, to improve accessibility. This is a major effort, but very important. -- Closer integration of clipart and template libraries with user experience. -- Update branding and visual styling, contemporary and compelling, fresh and relevant. -- Social integration, allow our users to quickly and easily share their thoughts in a way that compliment their commercial social behavior. Explore the integration of consumer service-specific capabilities as well as generic Share... actions. -- And many other smaller items Obviously the release date for this cannot be pinned down so early, and releasing is PMC decision, not an IBM one. But we think that this work could be completed and tested for a release in the March/April 2013 time-frame. And the scope of the release might be significant enough to warrant a "4.0" designation. In any case, we'll soon set up a page on the wiki to collect these items. As always, I invite you to add your own priorities to the wiki, things that you would like to work on. This could be a new feature. Or, if one of the above items sound interesting to you, we always welcome help designing and implementing these features. Regards, -Rob
