[Gimp-print-devel] 3.2 or 4.0 Release criteria

[Robert L K. <rl...@al...>]

I want to start thinking about the next stable release of the plugin.

I've been thinking that this summer would be a good time -- it would
let us get in a significant chunk of development, while still keeping
the release cycle short enough so that we can keep up with the
hardware (new printers seem to come out quite frequently).  That means
we're talking about 3 months from now, give or take.

If we're going to do that, we need to start thinking about release
criteria.  The obvious issues to consider are:

1) What is the minimum required functionality to make a new stable
   release worthwhile to users?  That should be measured in quality
   and features.  I believe that we're getting toward that point in
   terms of devices (well, Epson devices at any rate) and quality
   (maybe I should try the 3.0-based plugin that comes with the Gimp
   for comparison some time).  There are other issues, such as
   device-specific settings, a help system, and so forth that we need
   to consider.

2) What do we need to do with the interface?  It's still rough in some
   ways: the print coordinates aren't correct (the origin isn't the
   top left of the paper, it's the top left of the printable area;
   Gimp users probably don't care too much, but Ghostscript users know
   what I'm talking about); there are a number of features that are of
   more interest to developers (such as dithering algorithms, and
   gamma) than to end users, and there's still a lot of clutter.  We
   also need to decide which of the two interfaces we're going to
   support.

3) Quality.  I don't mean print quality; I mean robustness,
   performance, and correctness.

4) Documentation.

5) The Ghostscript driver is a mess right now, and there's no error
   checking (everyone who has tried using a mode that's not compatible
   with their printer knows what THAT means).  I think that this is
   even more important than the Gimp plugin from a strategic point of
   view.

6) Gimp release status.  We're not tied too tightly to the Gimp, but
   if we can mesh schedules (and if the Gimp people are willing to
   accept a new release when we're ready) it would be to everybody's
   benefit.  I'm sure the Gimp people would rather have a better
   quality solution than what they have now.  Even if the schedules
   don't mesh, I presume that the Gimp folks plan to do several 1.2.x
   updates.  Would they be willing to accept a new print plugin as
   part of an update?  If so, what would the compatibility
   requirements be?  Another reason why it would be desirable to mesh
   schedules.

7) Testing.  I know that there are a fair number of people using this;
   I don't know just how many.  Freshmeat says that about 900 people
   have hit one of the two download URL's (both on Sourceforge); I
   haven't found how to get download statistics from Sourceforge, but
   I'd really like to know how much use it's getting.

8) Is this a 3.2 or a 4.0 release?  Is it overall a substantial enough
   change (I don't think that improved print quality alone would
   count) from release 3.0 to merit a new major number, or do we
   consider it incremental?

I'm throwing this out here to start discussion going.  I'd like the
entire core development team to think about this; I'd also like any
Gimp and other Linux printing people here to comment.  I personally
consider the major strategic goals to be support for a broad range of
printers, including both high end and low end printers, the
Ghostscript driver, quality, and meshing with the Gimp.  Again, we're
looking at a few months out, but we need to start planning now.

The other thing I'm going to try to do is spin a release once a week,
if there's enough new material.  The month between 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 was
quite long, although the dither code was undergoing a lot of changes.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rl...@al...>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lp...@uu...
Project lead for The Gimp Print --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton