Re: Indy (beta?)

["R.G. Mayhue" <rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com>]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
>
> > Are we shooting for a beta release of Indy on this round (6.2beta??)??
> 
> I'd hope so (-; We really want to be on CD. It's psychologically bad for
> us not to be. Speaking for myself, it's the main reason I slacked off. We
> need to get *something* on CD.
>
I have already contacted the good folks at Cheapbytes.com and they have
said that they would make the CD and sell it from their site. All we
need to do is supply the ISO.
>  
> > 1) XFree86-4.0 has been released and I downloaded and compiled from
> > source before the binaries were released and have been running it ever
> > since with no major problems. Do we want to include it? No other distro
> > has yet. We would be first.
> 
> Does it work with all cards ? This is one problem. Another issue is that
> it is *difficult* to configure, because Redhat's XConfigurator doesn't
> work with it yet ( unless someone can hack at it ).
>
No it dose not. But it should soon. Yea, It is a little tarse, but I
managed with XFree86 -configure. The hack is a thought, but I think the
XFree team is working on a better one.
> 
> > 2) Daily RPM builds for the KDE 2 alpha have been released and the KDE 2
> > code base has been frozen. 
> 
> I believe the APIs are frozen.
> 
> > Only bug fixes allowed at this point. Most
> > reports a have read are fairly good. 
> 
> I find it usable but there are some stupid bugs at least with the one I'm
> using. For example, the logout button doesn't work. 
>
There are RPM's and hacks built by a member of the KDE team that have
corrected some/most of these problems. I believe Kmail is still unstable
and loosing mail. But the older 1.x version can be used in place of it.
> 
> > 3) Add Donovan's fonts, Indialer and the Tips we have been talking about.
> > (Plus anything else I may have missed).
> 
> Those Microsoft fonts are really good. ( as opposed to my ones which are 
> basically cheap adobe knockoffs ) 
> 
> We should, IMO, investigate the
> possibility of adding the gratis MS fonts. if we can't do this, we should
> write a little program that downloads and installs them. ( I could do this
> ).
> 
> THere are some other nice tweaks we could include , such as tweaking the
> ghostscript Fontmap so that it automatically works with the MS font
> collection.
>
I'll take your word for it. I don't know much about fonts.
 
> BTW, I am trying to learn C and python to make myself more useful (-;
> 
Great!

The above reasons are all good reasons to state "Beta" in the release.
It may not work for everyone. But it will get us out the door and on CD
and generate bug reports to help with the final release later.

Also, we will be the first to release these new packages in a distro and
claim some attention. Even if not all is perfect. It will probably work
for most and be "bleeding edge".

I think my points are valid because we need a release, even a BETA
release! I think it will help.

--
R.G. Mayhue