[GRASS-dev] Re: include wxgrass or not in 6.3.0

[Hamish]

Paul Kelly wrote:
> Yes, and don't all the new features include many usability
> improvements and feature enhancements to the Tcl/TK GUI parts
> since the last stable release? I would worry that with all the talk
> about wxgui these are going to be a bit overlooked and people won't
> realise gis.m and gis_set.tcl are much improved since 6.2.

How would the wx folks feel about adding " (Experimental)" to the end
of the window title bar in the main wxGUI control window? That way wary
users are impressed at how usable it now is and optimistic users don't
get a bad impression when they find things that still need work.
?
Also in the release announcement we could stress that both native MS
Windows and wx stuff is still experimental but we welcome testers and
here's the URL to the bug tracker if you find anything that needs
fixin'.

> E.g. things I've been involved in and know about - font selection and
> improved GUI location creation.

Note we went to some trouble to backport some of the improved tcl
startup stuff for 6.2.2 (Michael's EPSG search tool). But I don't think
the g.proj stuff was included in that.
  http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass622.html

> I'm sure there are lots more - Michael has been pretty responsive
> in fixing and tidying up little issues as they come along.

As we need a list for the release announcement, ...
+ improved startup options for creating new projects
+ improved tcltk gis.m
+ experimental wxGUI functional
+ experimental native MS Windows functional
+ experimental Cairo driver present (new config stuff not backported)
+ --quiet & --verbose
+ message standardization increases number of translated messages
+ heaps of new module options  (any favorites?)
+ a few new symbols
+ new modules (explicitly list each)  'ls */bin | sort | uniq -d' ?
+ improved font infrastructure & options
+ what else???


> For this reason alone, not including wxgui in the release is IMHO an 
> excellent way to make the point that gis.m is still the preferred
> stable GUI.

As above, there are some ways to accomplish both goals without leaving
stuff out.


Other things to do before 6.3.0-
- clean up release announcement:
  http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.3.0-News
- create new PDF module synopsis for 6.3.0  (script in tools/)
   I can work on that.
- prepare updated PDF beginner's guide based on Lorenzo's old one:
 
http://wwwamb.bologna.enea.it/forgrass/documents/Grass-6-Visual-Tutorial.pdf
  LaTeX -> trunk/doc/beginners_guide_tcl.tex ?
   I am happy to help work on that if it's ok with Lorenzo.
- prepare an extended what's new article for the next OSGeo Journal
- test and backport updates for i.fusion.brovey, i.landsat.rgb,
  r.in.srtm scripts
- consider remaining milestone bugs, other bugs ...
- other stuff???


Hamish



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