[Sugar-devel] [ANNOUNCE] Sucrose 0.85.2 Development Release

[Simon Schampijer]

Dear Sugar Community,

This is the second development release in the 0.86 release cycle - see 
the schedule [1] for more details. Note, that we are two weeks late with 
this release, as we wanted to land some of the features so we can get 
feedback on, especially the toolbar redesign. This will have no effect 
on the final release date, though.

We are getting closer to the feature freeze and a few features have been 
landed in this release. Please test them carefully and report any bug 
and workflow issues you find to get them in good shape for the release. 
A friendly BugSquad [2] will be available to triage those bugs 
accordingly and the developers can never have enough bug food. If you 
have non-bug feedback about features you can use the sugar-devel mailing 
list to share it with us.

 From a user point of view we want to highlight the following changes 
that have been made:

=== Switch to Metacity window manager===
Sugar switches the window manager from Matchbox to Metacity. Matchbox is 
designed for small devices that run all applications maximized. Sugar 
can run in devices with bigger screens and some applications break when 
run in Matchbox. Using Metacity instead means that some unsugarized apps 
would run better inside Sugar and that Sugar activities would behave 
better when run outside Sugar.

=== Flash Activities ===
Gnash has been added to the Sugar Platform, meaning that authors of 
educative content can use Flash tools [3] to create activities for Sugar.

=== Activity Toolbar redesign ===
The activity toolbar has been redesigned, since the design of using tabs 
to group options, an activity can have, did not turn out to work so 
well. More details about the new toolbar design [4]. The redesign gives 
a solution for the "stop activity issue" pointed out in #452. Browse and 
Write have been ported to use the new Toolbar design.

=== Tabs in Browse ===
Links that would open in a new window now open in new tabs inside the 
main activity window similar to the behavior in other browsers. Though 
this feature [5] isn't proposing any way for the user to explicitly open 
any link in a new tab, or explicitly create a new tab.

=== Ad hoc Networking ===
The new ad hoc networking facilities allows users to connect with each 
other over wireless in an ad hoc manner without infrastructure like an 
Access Point. This is the so called under a tree scenario. OLPC provided 
that functionality based on hardware mesh. This feature allows to 
provide that functionality with nearly all the wireless hardware. 
Furthermore it allows you to do share an internet connection using the 
same mechanism.

=== Read ===
The read activity does support now Epub files. For getting epubs, 
http://www.feedbooks.com and http://www.epubbooks.com/ can be 
recommended. Furthermore this version will let you associate (add and 
edit) notes with your bookmarks, and has a slightly more useful 
fullscreen view (you can now get a rough idea of how much battery is 
left in your laptop/netbook without invoking the frame).

== Compatibility ==
There are no known compatibility issues, as of today.

== Update to this version ==
Please use the instructions for your distribution (Fedora, Ubuntu, 
Debian etc) of choice to update to this release.

== What is new for packagers ==
Please see the details at [7]. The locations of the tarballs are listed 
in the release notes as well.


Thanks everyone for your great contributions! You can find more infos 
and pictures at [8].

In behalf of the sugar community,
    Your Release Team


[1] Schedule: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.86/Roadmap#Schedule
[2] BugSquad: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/BugSquad
[3] Flash Activities: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Flash_Activities
[4] Toolbar: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/New Toolbar Design
[5] Tabs: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Tabs_In_Browse
[6] Ad hoc Networking: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Ad_hoc_Networking
[7] Packagers info: 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.86/0.85.2_Notes#What_is_new_for_packagers
[8] Notes: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.86/0.85.2_Notes