2.25 release notes items

Major changes in GNOME 2.25, to be mentioned in the release notes. Please make a list here when we reach feature freeze.

See the advice about the schedule and translation.

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. In fact, if it's too pretty, people will link to it and complain that it's not perfect.

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.

Random bits that should be moved somewhere else

XXX so investigate and move

general

• smoother login experience (panel animation is better, no desktop icon that moves around, etc.)

Evolution

• CalDAV support gained support for VTODO and VJOURNAL resources (In which use-case is it used, some example?)

Empathy

• Integrate file-transfer
  • Only telepathy-salut (local-xmpp) support it atm
  • Work is being done for telepathy-gabble (Jabber) and will probably be ready around GNOME 2.26.1
  • Other protocols may come later...
• UI to invite a contact in a chatroom.
• UI to accept/refuse invitation to join a chatroom.
• Add sound events, using libcanberra-gtk. Needs a sound theme to be installed.
• Integrating farsight2 and libtelepathy-farsight.
• Improved empathy's VOIP UI
• libnotify bubbles.

Epiphany

• the location bar is now a "woohoo-bar" a-la Firefox3
  • - (When you type text in the location bar, epiphany looks up the text in the URLs and Titles in the history and bookmarks)
• location bar now searches by AND keyword, example: "epiphany bug" would throw 0 results now; but with the new code you will get everything containing "epiphany" and "bug"
• ephy-webkit beta (to be confirmed)

Deskbar-Applet

• moved to GIO and GTK builder

gnome-session

• presence D-Bus API

gvfs

• new trash backend (with background trash cleaning according to desrt [it executes your petition to empty it on the background without locking you with heavy i/o)
• WebDAV backend now uses the configured HTTP proxy correctly
• ObexFTP backend now supports write operation
• SFTP favicon (/etc/favicon.png)
• Stable URIs for DNS-SD (Useful with gnome-user-share that picks a different random port between each start)

panel

• to move the panel, the user now needs to press the same modifier as in metacity to move windows (ie, by default, Alt). This was needed since users were accidentally moving the panels quite often.
• smoother animation on login, started when applets are displayed

Mousetweaks (accessibility features for the pointer)

• a compatibility issue with gftp has been fixed
• an issue has been fixed which sometimes occurred when Dwell Click and Simulated Secondary Click were simultaneously enabled
• now uses stock items and standard icon names
• does not rely anymore on the gnome accessibility gconf key to detect if AT support is enabled

• migrated from Glade to GtkBuilder

• manual has been updated and license raised to GNU FDL 1.3

Nautilus

• Nautilus gained the possibility to call PackageKit to install applications for unsupported mime types.

• Background crossfades when you change it in the background properties, and fades in at the login.

Totem

• new Jamendo plugin, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561811

• Ability to burn current movie as (S)VCD / dvd using Brasero (as plugin), see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=565383

• new UPNP/DLNA media renderer plugin
• Video gallery creation
• Text subtitle search plugin and easier text subtitle selection

• DVD playback in GStreamer now uses resindvd and supports menus (see http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/wiki/DvdPlayback)

• Video zoom (for removing black borders) is also supported in GStreamer backend
• Dropping of files is handled better (append to playlist, replace current playing, show menu with possible actions)

Evince

• PDF Optional Conent (Layers) support
• Monitor and reload of documents opne from a remote location
• Show progress information in the message area when loading/saving files (only when it takes too long, generally when downloading/uploading remote documents)
• Show progress information in the message area when printing
• Confirmation dialog when there are active print jobs while closing the main window
• Searching is quite faster now

What's new for users

NEW MODULES

• gnome-user-share (Personal file sharing over WebDAV, http and bluetooth)
• Brasero (Full featured CD / DVD burning application, and provides a replacement to nautilus-cd-burner)
• evolution-mapi (Add support to latest Exchange Mailbox to Evolution)

Evolution

• Can import .pst files (Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders)
• Can connect to Exchange 2007 using new evolution-mapi module

Empathy

• gained a pidgin-accounts import dialog
• support for chatroom invitations
• supports popup and sound notifications for events

nautilus-sendto (nautilus-sendto is not part of the GNOME desktop)

• can send files over IM using Empathy
• can copy files to removable devices and gvfs mount
• Send to nautilus-cd-burner (to create new CD, or complete existing one)
• can send files to UPNP servers

GDM

• gained back real automatic and timed login

Deskbar-Applet

• Added OpenSearch module

gedit

• new fullscreen mode with a sliding toolbar
• easy switch from one syntax to another.
• ported to windows.

gnome-games

• new game, Lightsoff. Started off as an example in the Seed module
• Aisleriot gained a new game, Queen of Italy (aka Terrace)

gnome-settings-daemon

• low diskspace checker has been added to the housekeeping plugin of gnome-settings-daemon, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557647

gnome-media?

• new volume control notification icon
• new combined sound/volume capplet

gnome-control-center

• About-me
  • - Add support for enrolling fingerprints using the fprintd D-Bus service
• no more sound capplet, part of the settings moved to the new capplet in gnome-media
• visible bell settings moved to the audio feedback dialog in the keyboard capplet

gnome-utils

• XXX - system log viewer has been rewritten (but what is the gain?)

gtk

• input methods can now be set per-widget. if you use the context menu to select an input method, that no longer applies to the whole app
• input methods work in password entries now
• password entries show a warning if Caps Lock is on
• handling of keyboard shortcuts in the presence of multiple keyboard layouts has been changed
• file chooser can show file sizes and remembers size, accepts uri in the location entry, can mount stuff

Orca

• Many bug fixes and performance improvements across the board (over 160 bugs)

• A couple very serious hangs were eliminated.
• Speech pitch, rate, and volume now change on the fly when adjusting them in the preferences UI.
• Vastly improved support for ARIA in Firefox.
• Improved performance and reliability for flat review.

• New feature to speak MultiCaseStrings as individual words.

• New feature to automatically speak shortcuts (mnemonics).
• Known Problems:

  • See the open bugs in the Orca bug database. We not only track Orca bugs in the Orca bug database, we also track bugs in other components that affect Orca's ability to provide good access to them.

  • Compiz is still not fully accessibility friendly at this point in time. We recommend you stick with Metacity until the Compiz kinks are worked out. If you're using Compiz and want to switch to Metacity, you can run the following command: metacity --replace.

What's new for administrators

sound

• event sounds are now taken from themes according to the fd.o sound theme spec. Sound themes are installed in /usr/share/sound/<themename>. The gconf key controlling the current theme is /desktop/gnome/sound/theme_name. An example of a sound theme can be found here: http://people.freedesktop.org/~mccann/dist/sound-theme-freedesktop-0.2.tar.bz2

What's new for developers

libbrasero-media

• sort of replaces nautilus-burn lib

gtk+

• support for icons in entries has been added in GTK+ (replacing SexyIconEntry). See http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/2.15/gtk-migrating-entry-icons.html

• orientation API

• GtkEntry can now display a progress bar inside itself (used in Epiphany to display load progress)

• GtkAction-widget interface has been reworked, see the GtkActivatable interface documentation http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/2.15/GtkActivatable.html

Empathy

• autocompletion of contact names in its "new message" dialog box, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=552296

gnome-power-manager

• Now tracks processor wakeups to be able to tell which application is draining your battery fastest.

eel

• eel has been merged back into nautilus and is no longer available for other applications (it was never meant to in the first place).

Evince

• Specific EvView code has been moved to a library (libevview) so that it can be embedded into other applications.

• Libevdocument (the library to write evince backends) is now public so it's possible to build backend out of the evince tree.
• There are already python bindings for both libraries in python-gnome-desktop

gedit

• Message bug system that allows plugin developers to make intercomunication between plugins.

Infrastructure

New damned-lies, merging in the Vertimus translation tool that was already used by some teams. See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2008-December/msg00113.html.

New projects.gnome.org instead of www.gnome.org/projects, see http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2008-November/msg00003.html

New news.gnome.org site, informing the world about GNOME. Allows people to easily follow e.g. product related information (Metacity, gtk+ blogs, etc), Foundation related news, developer info (devel-announce-list) as well as keep track of changes (Commit Digest).

What's new for mobile developers

XXX - copy/pasted mostly

GNOME 2.26 is the second release of the GNOME Mobile release set! GNOME Mobile brings standard desktop components together to provide a core platform on which distributors and handheld manufacturers can build rich programming environments.

The initial GNOME Mobile release set consists of:

• System infrastructure:

  • BlueZ is a complete, modular, standards compliant Bluetooth stack for Linux, which includes graphical utilities for GNOME.

  • Evolution Data Server (D-Bus port) manages access to the calendar, tasks and address book information available for personal information management applications, via the convenient D-Bus messaging system.

  • Telepathy uses the D-Bus messaging system to provide a unified framework for instant messaging, voice over IP and other types of real-time communications.

  • Avahi facilitates Zeroconf service discovery on a local network.

  • GStreamer is a rich multimedia library, covering use-cases including simple Ogg/Vorbis playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video (non-linear editing) processing.

  • SQLite is a high-performance, very simple transactional SQL database which you can easily embed into your applications.

  • Matchbox is a window manager for non-desktop X11 environments such as handhelds, set-top boxes, kiosks and anything else for which screen space, input mechanisms or system resources are limited.

  • GConf is the GNOME Configuration system, for storage and retrieval of user preferences.

  • gio and gvfs provide a virtual filesystem API supporting a wide array of back-ends including local disks, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, NFS and SMB shares.

• User interface
  • GTK+
  • Pango
  • ATK
  • Cairo
• Core infrastructure
  • glib
  • DBus
• Language bindings
  • C
  • C++
  • Python

As soon as they start to become available, we will be collecting downloadable, testable virtual machine images of distributions based on GNOME Mobile 2.24, such as Poky, Moblin and Ubuntu Mobile, which developers can try for themselves and develop against.

The GNOME Mobile platform is at the heart of a wide range of Linux-based mobile platforms, including Maemo, the ACCESS Linux Platform, the LiMo reference platform, Ubuntu Mobile, Moblin, and Poky.

Performance and cleanup

• Many modules removed the usage of specific GNOME libraries such as libgnome, libgnomeui, libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, libglade, libgnomevfs. None of these modules should be used in GNOME 3. See also http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2008/10/07/towards-a-ridley-based-platform/.

• Seahorse daemon only starts when sharing is enabled, speeding up startup

• Pango uses at least less memory with some fonts, e.g. saves 8MB for DejaVu Sans

• Various modules started using gtk_timeout_add_seconds, lowering power usage. This after post: http://gould.cx/ted/blog/Saving_the_world_one__w_at_a_time

• GNOME Power Manager now depends on DeviceKit-power and the engine has been re-written to remove thousands of lines of obsolete code. It now starts much quicker, and uses far less resources on multi-user systems.

Regressions

• <Module name>: <The changes>.

• gnome-network-preferences has been renamed to gnome-network-properties

• ORBit2: stopped calling g_thread_init() to accomodate the sensitiveness of Microsoft Windows and will display a warning if it was not previously called, this will need changes in a lot of places, https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547885 (XXX: this change has been cancelled)

• eel: merged into nautilus, shouldn't be used by applications anymore
• vte: obsolete font backends have been removed, now uses pangocairo backend

Plans for the next release

• <Module name>: <The changes>.