[kde-promo] Announcement for KDE SC 4.10.1

[Carl Symons]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Torgny Nyblom <nyblom at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As I'm preparing the code for this release it would be great if some word
> wizzard could put together the announcement (to be sent to kde-announce, kde-
> press-announce, displayed on the web page and on the dot).
>
> Release date is on Tuesday 5/3.
>
> /Regards
> Torgny
>

Hello Torgny,

Thank you for working on the 4.10.1 point release. I'd enjoy crafting
the announcement.

Word wizardry doesn't really happen by magic. Content for the
announcement is the most important aspect of it.

Referring to http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.9.5.php ...

The first two paragraphs need to come from some technical source. The
first paragraph speaks to the severity and safety of the release. Will
4.10.1 be "a safe and pleasant update for everyone"? Someone who knows
what they are talking about needs to provide this information.

The second paragraph summarizes changes in the release. It also refers
and provides links to other sources of information. Someone who knows
what they are talking about needs to provide this information. The
link locations need to be updated for 4.10.1, and more detail is
needed for "browse the Subversion and Git logs" (where are they? How
can a relatively naive person get to this information?).

An appropriate screenshot is needed (details below).

The sections about installing and compiling need to be updated with
4.10.1-specifics.

The remaining sections (supporting, about and press) don't need technical input.

So the release announcements have quite a bit of content that someone
with technical knowledge needs to provide (probably from the release
team). In the past (I think), sebas pulled all of the release content
together. If you aren't going to gather that information, is there
someone on the release team who can do that?

When everything has been assembled, someone with commit privileges for
http://kde.org/announcements needs to create the announcement page. I
can do the Dot article.

Sebas has also sent the announcement to kde-announce and
kde-press-announce, which he will no longer do. I believe that sebas
and Lydia have access for sending official announcements. If there are
others, I am not aware of them. So this is another missing piece at
the moment (for me anyway).


Carl


Guidelines for release screenshots (mostly from Nuno Pinheiro):
- Use default wallpaper
- Use only two or three colors for anything that's not a photo
- Resolution 1280x720
- Use the same font everywhere. Oxygen or Liberation Sans is preferred; other
sans fonts are workable.
- Use the default wallpaper
- Hinting style set to full. Even if you like big fonts, the result is
much sharper if your hinting is set to full.
- Use a smaller font size like 8 or 9. Small fonts have a thinner
trace that makes the font thickness be exactly 1 pixel. If your font
thickness is not 1, then you are in trouble.  Low hinting style and
large fonts make traces of about 1.3 - 1.5 thickness that result in
blurry looking fonts. They are not only bad looking, they tend to
produce headaches as your eyes try to constantly focus the font.
- Don't use bold. Bold fonts are not as readable as normal fonts
because the width of the trace is usually larger than 1 and smaller
than 2 producing blurry results.
- Make your fonts more greyish than blackish; gives much better
sharpness results.