After more than two and a half years and about three hundred revisions that led to a spaghetti-like mess of less than helpful information, I finally decided that it was time for a shake-up. Zach and I have begun a reorganization and partial rewrite of the Mozilla Release Notes.
The plan is to break the old doc up into several parts including a "what's new in this release" document (README), a "compatibility, installation and uninstallation" document (Installation Notes), a "known issues" document (Known Issues) and a few other lesser docs. In addition to breaking the document into smaller and more focused parts, we'll also be ripping out a lot of unhelpful cruft that's built up over the years with a focus on highlighting only the most important issues. This means that messes like the "every bug that exists in the postscript module that doesn't exist in the xprint module" get cleaned out.
If all goes well we should have it completed in time for the 1.4 release on Monday. (Yep.)
Mozilla 1.4 is coming out Monday?! I'm excited!! Does this mean that Netscape 7.1 will come out Monday too? Or will it be a while before it's ready?
I'm glad that the developers will finally get to put the AppSuite aside and focus on the browser, Mail/News, and editor component apps. Are Chatzilla or Calender Project going to become seprate apps too? Or is the answer the same as when I asked before (no one knows yet)..
Sweet - the 1.4 release date has been coming for a while now, I'm glad that it's finally here! :)
And even better...Mozilla Firebird becomes the main focus of development efforts. It can't get much better than that. :)
Posted by: milbertus on June 26, 2003 05:36 PMBetaNews (betanews.com) seems to already have NS 7.1 available for download, but Netscape's website has no mention of it--and its FTP site has a forbidden-to-access "7.1" directory, though, so maybe it's coming soon. (Or they put it up, BetaNews got it, and they took it down again.)
In any case, this release will spell good news. Netscape gets refreshed with the latest Mozilla updates, and development will focus on the Mozilla Birds. :)
Posted by: Robert Morris on June 26, 2003 07:04 PMWish not release 1.4 final until these regression fixed. In 1.4 RC3, they still exist.
bug#208045
bug#208359
bug#208719
On-Topic, I wonder each time what "New in this release" really means. Esp. when looking at release notes for something like RC2 or 3. New compare do what? There are a few things in the release notes indicating changes (bold faces in version numbers, for example), I'd love to have those more specific.
Posted by: Axel Hecht on June 27, 2003 01:44 AMSplitting the readme into separate bits is a great idea! It's very unwieldy at the moment!
Posted by: Rob... on June 27, 2003 02:49 AMThis is long overdue -- the most important thing imho is to keep the notes short because people's attention span isn't very long :)
Anyhow, bigup Asa + Zach for doing this :)
Posted by: yoda on June 27, 2003 04:19 AMI agree with Axel.
I've been a frequent downloaded of the 1.4rc[1-3] releases (began with 1.4b infact). Often I've wondered what is different/ has changed between two release candidates. I check the release notes for answers, but it seems to me that the release notes tell us what is different between 1.4 and (probably) 1.3, and not between 1.4rc3 and (say) 1.4rc2. Really hope the rewrite will improve the "New in this release" section. :)
Posted by: Rakhesh Sasidharan on June 27, 2003 09:30 AMThe what's new section has traditionally included all the new features between releases. For alphas and betas I've put what was new to just that alpha or beta and for final releases I put what's new since the previous final release.
So, for example, 1.4a relnotes gets what's new between 1.3final and 1.4a. 1.4b relnotes gets what's new between 1.4a and 1.4b and 1.4final relnotes gets what's new between 1.3final and 1.4final. That seems to make the most sense given the different audiences for the various releases and the goal of not adding any new features between beta and final (even truer for release candidates).
Here's how I see it. People who download a beta are the kind of people that may have downloaded an alpha so they don't need a repeat of that old alpha what's new info or if they do want that info they can probably figure out how to go look it up. People who download a final are not necessarily the same people who download alphas and betas, are unlikely to know how to find the what's new sections of the alpha and beta release notes and should not be excluded from the information about what's changed since the last final release they're upgrading from.
On the "why does the release notes what's new section not make explicit what's changed between rc 1, rc 2, and rc 3" question, simple, nothing major has changed. We haven't added any new features. The what's new section is not a full changelog. It highlights major new features and occasionally a major bugfix. If it was a changelog it would be between 1,000 and 2,000 items long. Really. If you follow things so closely that you need to know the 10 bugs that were fixed between rc 2 and rc 3 then go read the newsgroup where I post that kind of developer and tester oriented information.
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on June 27, 2003 09:17 PMRip out all the comments about the MacOS <= 9 and CFM versions (and it's bugs), and replace MacOS with MacOS X!
Posted by: Ernst Persson on June 28, 2003 01:04 AM