[Squeakfoundation]Ideas for 3.7

[Doug Way]

Rather than waiting until the last minute, I thought I'd throw out some
ideas now for things which could be part of the 3.7 plan, to get some
discussion going.

Input from everyone is welcome, although suggestions should be
things that are already implemented and just need to be incorporated,
or something you plan to work on yourself.


Here's my starter list of large 3.7 items:  (some of these are 
unfinished items carried
over from the 3.6 plan)

- Incorporate SM 1.1 which supports package versions, start working on
dependency scheme
- Diego's look enhancements
- Accufonts
- ANSI Smalltalk changes (discuss first whether we want to do this)
- Possibly add a few free TrueType fonts directly to the Basic image,
e.g. BitStream Vera fonts? Wouldn't have to be set as the default 
text/list
fonts necessarily... maybe titlebar font. (also discuss)
- Maybe remove some more packages once SM 1.1 has settled down
- (add more here)

The above items will need shepherds to make sure they get done. (I
could handle Accufonts, TT fonts, maybe one or two others.) Smaller
enhancements should be handled via the usual harvesting process
(e.g. horizontal scrollbar enhancement, which I'll probably approve).


Other items:

- Decide whether the following release should be 3.8 or 4.0 (w/image
format change), someone like Tim will need to coordinate this issue
- Support for ISO-8859 or multibyte character sets could be considered
if we determine that it's ready to go in... we don't want MacRoman
forever. Or, could be in a future release.
- I will remove all deprecated methods (senders of #deprecated*) in the
image at the beginning of 3.7alpha, this will be a regular occurrence at
the beginning of each release. Package owners should do the same.
(probably there aren't many deprecated methods in external packages
right now)


To do for 3.6 final release:

- Decide whether to have just a Full image (as Daniel suggested) or 
both a Full and Basic image as part of the release.  I agree that the 
Full image should be the one promoted as the "default" choice for 
newbies to try, but I don't see why we couldn't also offer the Basic 
image as a download... it could be labeled "for developers only" or 
somesuch.
- Make sure all of the removed "Squeak Official" Full-distribution 
packages are still loadable and working in 3.6.  For example, it 
sounded like PWS was broken (see post from Joshua Gargus on 
squeak-dev).  One option for that particular package would be to vote 
on whether we should dump it from the distribution altogether, since 
it's not really used by anyone.


That's it for now, gotta run.

- Doug


p.s. I'm going out of town now until Saturday, so I won't be able to 
respond until then.  Unfortunately I didn't have time to incorporate 
the latest batch of approved fixes before leaving :-( but I'll get to 
that on Saturday.