[Marble-devel] One month to Total Freeze!

[Inge Wallin]

On Thursday 23 August 2007 14:55, Inge Wallin wrote:

> And on one month from today, sep 23rd, there is a Total Release Freeze!
> After that, every patch must be reviewed on some development list.  We have
> to really think through what we should try to make ready and what we should
> wait with until 4.1.

Ok, that didn't generate a lot of responses...  I guess I'll just have to 
answer myself with my own ideas.

I believe that our features in Marble will fall into one of 3 categories:
 - User features of the Marble application
 - Features usable to application writers using MarbleWidget
 - Desktop infrastructure, like DBUS support and similar

So here is my suggestion for what to do for 4.0 and what we should wait with 
until 4.1. I won't touch any specific Qt-only releases here.

User features
 - GPS support: 4.0.  
   It's as good as finished - would be interesting to hear Andrews thoughts 
about what's left to do.
 - Flat projection: 4.0
   We're not talking days here until it's finished, but hours.
 - KML file support: 4.0
   I'm not sure about the exact status here, but everybody seems to think it's 
going to be ready.  Murad?
 - Other projections: ???
   I know that Torsten wants Mercator projection for 4.0, but have no idea if 
this is feasible.
 - GHNS support to download new maps and maybe other stuff: 4.1
  Would be awesome to have in 4.0, but do we have the time?

MarbleWidget features for application writers.
 - Need to be able to disallow RMB menu.: 4.0
 - Need to send a signal when the map is clicked: 4.0
 - Other forgotten methods: which?:  4.0 / 4.1
  I'm sure we have forgotten some nice-to-have methods on MarbleWidget.
 - Qt designer support for all controller widgets: 4.0
   This includes MarbleNavigator (done), and the other parts of 
MarbleControlBox.  This is clearly tackat's domain.
 - Improved layer system with plugin API: 4.1
   I don't think we'll have time to design the plugin API until 4.0.
 - APIDOX for all public classes: 4.0
 - Programmers manual: 4.0

Desktop infrastructure:
 - DBUS controlling the marble application: 4.0
   We should at least provide a simple proof of concept for this.
 - Support for maps with higher resolution: 4.1
   I think we need some changes in the engine, e.g. higher integer precision, 
which makes this feature too big for 4.0
 - Install maps at install time instead of at first run: 4.0

There, that's my suggestion.  Work enough for everybody until 4.0 is frozen, I 
think. What did I forget? Where did I go wrong? Mail away!

> 	-Inge

-- 
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge at lysator.liu.se       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |