[Kst] 0.99 Plans

[Barth Netterfield]

Happy Thursday,

Except for some bugs, 0.98 is looking pretty good.  I wanted to start a 
discussion on our plans for the near future.  Here is what I propose:

0.99 will be a (mostly?) feature complete curve plotting system, and
should be considered almost like an RC for 1.0.  Plank-HFI and 
BLAST will both be needing it soon (as in already).  

Feature Policy: Any features we want to add before 1.0 (September) need
to be added now.  BUT: If you are going to add something semi-big, discuss
your plan on the list before you start into it, so we don't end up
having to make drastic changes later.

Certain areas should not be hacked without first bouncing it off of the
section's maintainer (discussion on the list is the best):  For section
maintainers, I propose
  -Updates and class structures, lists, globals, threads: George
  -Filters, Fits, Elog, Events: Andrew
  -Dialogs: Barth
  -New Features: The List
If someone bounces something, !respond!.  If no one responds, mods are
fair game.  When it doubt, bounce the idea, or explain what you did when you 
submit and be prepared for a reversion or fixes if there are issues.

Date: ASAP.  No later than Aug 15.  This would leave 2 weeks for
features, and 2 weeks polishing.

I've put names next to some tasks where I thought it was obvious.

If you disagree with anything here, please tell me!

Barth

o: optional
-: less optional

Next release: 0.99

New Features:
-Filters	(Andrew)
-Filter sets	(George to (re)write the class; UI TBD)
o Rick's event label tag thing... 
	 Rick, can you describe what you are doing?
o create a database system for constants
	 (The current list of constants is useful rarely, but not
	 never: one needs to be able to turn them off, or add new ones)
o Drag and Drop to other kst's or to other apps. (george)

UI Changes:
-In plot dialog use D 'n D not double click to move curves
-Better default plot placement if not in grid mode  
-Finish fit parameters  (Andrew)
-'File->New' means erase everything and start over, not add new tab,
 which could be disastrously confusing: should be fixed.
-Detect and deal with oversized memory requests (George)
o status messages/progress for lengthy actions
o vector defaults should be keyed to $PWD and stored as a map
  (This needs to be thought about first...)
o QTable is really slow for view vectors dialog - need to make something 
faster
	(consider separate table update rate - 1Hz?)
o Line Types don't work for curves with high point density.  Need a
  distance traveled base algorithm

Bugs:
- Histograms don't export vectors
- using QWaitCondition in update thread is bad - it's broken in all but the
  most recent Qt releases (George)
- Kst Settings reportedly don't work (can someone explain?)
- Barth can't get event vectors to 'work'.  What are they suppose to do?
	(Andrew?)
- locking is missing in places - especially dialogs (plugin, etc) (Can
	  George verify this?)
- Deleting a window doesn't properly delete plots, leading to orphaned 
objects.
- invalid memory accesses on closing the data wizard - Qt bug?
- flicker was reintroduced (see layout mode for an example)
- Something before 0% and at 50% cause progress updates for data wizard to not
  work well
o unloading and reloading plugin with new interface doesn't update the dialog
o plugin error returns need to be enhanced (esp if malloc fails)
o the common implemented functionality for data dialogs may need a rethink -
  it's impossible to override behaviour of functions (Please Explain)
o deleting a piolib database crashes kst (George - on hold until piolib works)
- More bugs are at bugs.kde.
o The kdeextragear build system makes 3.1 compat hard/problem prone.