3.14 Release Notes Items

Changes in GNOME 3.14, to be potentially mentioned in the release notes.

Please note that this does not need to be pretty. It's just a list that will be used to make the actual release notes.

See also the advice about the schedule and translation.

How-to

Major changes are those that:

• Affect lots of people (users, administrators, or developers.)
• Are something people have been hoping for or discussing widely.
• Feature, usability, performance, internationalization or accessibility improvements.

Provide this information:

• What the module (application) is.
• What the change is.
  • Why it is important.
  • How it can be accessed.

Be as descriptive as you like. Better too long than too short. Links and screenshots are very welcome!

GNOME 3.14

• https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointThirteen/Features

What's new for users

multitouch

• Gesture support in all GTK+ applications: GTK+ offers and very extensively uses GtkGesture in order to handle both pointer and touch input

  • Enhanced behavior of built-in widgets on touchscreens, maintaining the same behavior on mice.
  • There is support for the most common/expected gestures. Applications can easily reuse those (eog/evince/gnome-documents do)
• On-screen keyboard shows automatically when there's no keyboard

Wayland

• Touch support
• DND support
• Classic mode works
• Working context menus, tooltips and combo boxes
• Window menu provided by gnome-shell
• Hi-DPI suppport
• Working move/resize of windows
• Working keyboard configuration

gnome-shell

• Gesture support. See https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/Gestures

  • Worth noting, only touchscreen gestures are implemented so far, touchpads are still left to be handled.
• Support for captive portals when connecting to wifi.
• Improved multi-monitor:
  • Better handling for vertically stacked monitors.
  • Windows remember which monitor you placed them on.
• Improved animations:

  • Better transition from desktop to the applications view - https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WorldofgnomeOrg/posts/TpbpK4QR8L2?pid=6045289334496291458&oid=112026213399155142823

  • "Swarm" animation TBC.

gnome-control-center

• Network-based sharing in the sharing panel. Shared resources like files, screen, media remote login are now tied to specific networks - http://www.hadess.net/2014/06/firewalls-and-per-network-sharing.html

• JetDirect and LPD printers can be added in the printer panel

• Location services added to privacy settings

gnome-maps

• Added route planning, including via points, using the open source GraphHopper interface

• Switched to GtkPopover for markers

• Initial support for touch through libchamplain

gnome-clocks

• Locations appear in gnome-shell search results now, thanks to a search provider. (initially it was only configured locations but it has been changed to match in all known locations)

gnome-contacts

• Added inline contact creation
• Reworked setup view. Merged into main window
• Reworked dialogs to new GNOME HIG

gnome-calculator

• A search provider provides results for calculations in gnome-shell searches

gnome-mines

• Redesigned

gnome-sudoku

• Redesigned

gnome-software

• Application addons
• Improved landing page - better layout, more content, includes star ratings.
• New welcome dialog.
• A lot more applications have screenshots / descriptions.

hitori

• Hitori is a number puzzle game, similar to Sudoku but fast-paced.

gnome-documents

• HiDpi improvements for search tags and scrub bar thumbnails

• Undo-able deletion
• 2-finger zoom + 1 finger swipe support through libevview

gnome-photos

• Support for Google photos
• Support for DLNA media servers
• Undo-able deletion

• HiDpi improvements for search tags

gedit

• New open popover in headerbar - allows you to search recent documents or open an existing one.
• Line/col popover in statutbar.
• Changes in headerbar layout.
• Redesign of the main menu, using now a popover.
• View centering in fullscreen mode ( activate with right-margin property )
• The font chooser in preference has now a preview text
• Various shortcuts and mnemonics changes :
  • Ctrl+U for text to uppercase
  • Ctrl+L for text to lowercase
  • Ctrl+N for a new window
  • Alt+g for search and replace.
  • Escape refocus the active view
  • F10 toggle the gear menu

gnome-music

• Global search
• Remote sources support (i.e. Magnatune etc) in search textbox
• Playlists support

gnome-notes

• VJournal support (memo)

• OwnCloud offline mode if ownCloud client

gnome-boxes

• VM Snapshots: Create, delete, rename and revert to VM snapshots
• Multi-windows: Allow running boxes in their own seperate windows.

• Enable express installation for Debian through latest (>= 0.2.11) libosinfo.

• Downloading: Enter an HTTP(S) URL to a remote media in wizard and Boxes will download it for you.
• Allow editting the box's name through the title in properties view.
• More keyboard shortcuts:
  • Ctrl+N for launching wizard.
  • Ctrl+F for launching search.
  • F1 for help.
• Remove 'New' entry from global menu. It's context-sensitive and therefore does not belong there.
• Don't auto-fullscreen Boxes on launch.
• Don't reveal fullscreen topbar on pointer over edges to not interfere with user trying to reach WM decorations or apply edge gestures (as used in many modern operating systems) in the guest.
• Don't show WM decorations in fullscreen. This is especially ugly in classic-mode where we have 3 buttons.
• Drop weird and buggy custom thumbnail hilighting and enable it from gtk+.
• Replace hardcoded colors and background images with theme colors.
• Don't ignore CDROM devices.
• Better error message on failure to start a VM.

gnome-terminal

• Preferences dialog update

theme / toolkit

Lots of small improvements and refinements:

• animations
• new spinners
• more compact progress bars
• message dialogs have an improved look - all corners now rounded
• menu bars are a lot nicer
• smooth scrolling
• animated and draggable switches

evince

• Redesigned: added a header bar
• New windows are not empty anymore, they show a list of recently opened documents
• supports removing annotations
• HiDPI support
• Lots of accessibility support (forms)
• Multitouch gestures
  • Zoom
  • Scrolling
  • Next/previous page

yelp

• redesigned. got a header bar

simplescan

• Redesigned. got a header bar on systems that support it
• Correct generation of PDF trailer to conform to the PDF standard
• Add options to reorder pages
• Add non-standard option names for duplex scanning on HP And Brother scanners

gnome-weather

Redesigned:

• Uses geolocation to show you the weather for your current location.
• Improved forecasts layout.
• Plans for the future to add more extensive forecast information.

Eye of GNOME

• Color profiling for TIFF images (RGB(A) images only)
• Multitouch gestures
  • Zoom, rotation and skipping to next/previous image is supported

  • Carlos Garnacho made a video some while ago

Geolocation

• In addition to wifi-geolocation, we now use Mozilla Location Service for 3G-geolocation and geoip. This means increased accuracy, especially in the long term.

What's new for administrators

What's new for developers

gnome-software

• Applications can now display addons in gnome-software.

GLib

• Support for new mimeapps spec
• SHA-512 support in GHmac
• GNotification priorities
• Support for Implements in desktop files, see g_desktop_app_info_get_implementations()
• Unicode 7.0 support

GTK+

• Interactive debugging with GtkInspector

• GtkGesture, support for gestures. See https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.13/Gestures.html

  • In short, there is support for swipe/pan/drag for single-touch/mice, long/multipress for single-touch/mice, and pinch/zoom/rotate for 2-finger multitouch.
• Automatic loading of menus from resources

• Multi-selection support in GtkListBox

• Horizontal sections in popover menus

• Property bindings in GtkBuilder files

• Support for drawing outside a widgets allocation, see gtk_widget_set_clip()

• New transition types in GtkStack

• Adwaita is the default theme on all platforms

GtkSourceView

• New feature: file loading and saving (blog post)

Human Interface Guidelines

• New version, includes up to date design guidelines for GTK+ and GNOME.

• http://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/21/new-human-interface-guidelines-for-gnome-and-gtk/

What's new in accessibility

What's new in i18n/l10n

Well-known bugs

(not sure we need to have this section in the release notes, just putting it here to collect candidate bugs)

Plans for GNOME 3.16

GTK+

• GL support, GtkGLArea
• GSK: scenegraph support

• See https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK%2B/Roadmap

gnome-shell

• Touchpad gesture support

Handy links