[Audacity-devel] release announcement?

[Joshua H. <jha...@up...>]

To increase interest in Audacity, I was thinking of writing a release
announcement that expanded on the features of 1.0 and the new features of
1.1, something meaty for technical forums like linux-audio-dev.  I like
what is written in the news item at /newsite/ as a start.

How about something like this:  (criticism welcome, and don't feel
offended if I forgot your pet feature!)

The Audacity Development Team is happy to announce the simultaneous
release of versions 1.0.0 and 1.1.0.

Version 1.0.0 is the final, stable version of the original Audacity. It
is a good, simple audio editor suitable for recording, mixing, and
editing ordinary tracks of CD-quality audio, on many platforms including
Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.  Features include:

   * an unlimited number of tracks
   * an efficient data representation optimized for fast cut/copy/paste,
     undo/redo, and very rapid opening of Audacity projects (.aup)
   * an envelope tool
   * mute and solo buttons for each track
   * import and export MP3 (libmad/LAME), Ogg Vorbis, most uncompressed formats
   * basic effects like amplify, noise removal, and wahwah
   * id3 tag editing for MP3 files
   * a spectrogram viewer, as well as a "spectrum" display mode for tracks

Version 1.1.0 is the first beta release of the next version of Audacity.
Though this version has many new and useful features, some of these
features are still under development and they have not been tested as
much, and there may have problems.  Audacity 1.1.0 has all the features
of Audacity 1.0 and adds:

   * support for 24 and 32 bit audio
   * i18n support, with Spanish, French, and Russian translations included
   * LADSPA support
   * customizable keybindings
   * a toolbar for editing functions
   * a history window, allowing almost instant access to any previous
     state of editing
   * many more import and export formats thanks to libsndfile
   * audio i/o with PortAudio
   * an XML-based project file format, to guarantee forward compatibility

It is possible to have both versions of Audacity on your computer at the
same time.

Joshua

-- 
Joshua Haberman  <jo...@ha...>