[Squeakfoundation]3.6 MasterPlanner!?

[Tim Rowledge]

I haven't timeto offer much to planning right now since I'm trying to
get the VMMaker package (re)done and working on tools to build images to
spec and handling Canada paperwork and on and on. 
In an effort to be helpful, here are comments on current suggestions:-

> * Apply some number of package removals to the image.  (Perhaps you were
> taking this one for granted.)  I don't think we should try to plan exactly
> which ones will be removed, but we could set a rough goal of a certain number
> of MB removed from the image, perhaps.
Before any goals relating to size, number or whatever we should
establish a _quality_ goal. For example, no removal package is much use
unless the package can subsequently be installed and actually work. This
relates to the problem I'm having right now with filing out a changeset
not being even close to filing out the classes individually. Without
tools that let package maintainers work sensibly we're going to be in
trouble pretty quick.

> * Remove the Apple fonts from the image, and replace them with functionally
> similar bitmap fonts.  We would still need to decide whether this meant the
> Accufonts, or a move to ISO-8859-1.
Simplest first I'd say. Just get the Apple fonts out and _something_ in.
Accufonts seem reasonable to me. One could consider use of TTFs since
there are quite a lot of reasonable TTF free fonts around. That would
involve some decision on $_ etc. :-(

> > * Restart harvesting using the new process, hopefully removing some
> > backlog.
Some explicable process and cleaning up of swiki pages would help here.
I tried a week or two ago and got lost in a forest of oldlinks and
irelevant pages. And at the end I still didn't understand where to send
code I wanted reviewed or to approve.
> > * Get the simulator fixes by Craig back in.
Yes. THe various fixes he & Anthony worked out get an image running ok.
I think a bunch of simulatorclasses for plugins are still needed really.

> > * Start merging Anthony's work. Run time stuff is a good place to start.
The extra prims are harmless and easy and would allow people to load a
normal package effectively. As for the rest, well I still don't really
know. Ian needs to be involved but it can be tricky to keep his
attention.

> > * Start merging MCP's work, as they start to send it to us. Same for
> > KCP, except I for one am less aware of what they're working on, and have
> > less of an idea as to whether they'll have something ready to merge
> > anytime soon.
Yes. Let's encourage decent discussion on these as well.

> > * Networking/Streams/Sockets is something where a few people have put in
> > quite a lot of work. Find a way to start merging at least some of this
> > stuff, in small pieces. Ideally, we should do everything possible
> > without breaking networking applications. Then break networking (start
> > raising exceptions instead of dialogs) in 3.7alpha.
Flow? Filename cleanups? There's a boatload of crap to bail out of the
boat.
> > * SM 1.1

tim
-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- Monorail doesn't go all the way to Tomorrowland.