Current Roadmap

[Hynek Hanke]

Hello all,

I'm sending a *proposal* for the roadmap of Speech Dispatcher
development:

* Release 0.7.1

We plan to finish the 0.7.1 release by the end of August.
There are still some minor things to finish as was described
in my previous email.

Improvements it will bring:
     * Bugfixes, particularly memory leaks
     * Clever autospawn & improved error reporting
     * Fully flexible configuration of the client connection method
     * Patches from Debian and Ubuntu packages are merged upstream

Thanks for all your contributions.

We plan to possibly continue this branch with a 0.7.2 release
if new fixes and features arise that should be released fast.

* Release 0.8

We should plan to start working on the 0.8 release fully just
after the 0.7.1 release is out, this likely means from September.

Major proposed improvements include:

     * DBUS interface including a new communication protocol
     * ConsoleKit integration
     * Rework of the settings mechanism to use DConf/GSettings
     * Separate compilation and distribution of modules

We will begin the 0.8 cycle with a major code cleanup as this
has become necessary after the development and numerous
reworks due to changes in design decisions in the past. We must
eliminate tabs, re-indent and re-format the code and rename some
internal functions and variables in a consistent manner, move some
functions into separate files. This will be coordinated on the mailing
list to avoid merge conflicts, but your cooperation will be most welcome.
We will first setup guidelines and then stick to them.

We will first make a brief analysis of what needs to be done for
proper session integration with ConsoleKit and DBUS communication.
It is very likely that it will turn out that we will benefit greatly
from conversion from our own select-based mainloop to the
GLib mainloop and converting to GThreads instead of pthreads.

The new DBUS interface will offer the same functionality
as SSIP but should already be designed in a way that it
can be later extended to the new high level API based on
TTS API and being able to support additional requirements
we have on the API on top of what SSIP already supports.
Thus we will first need to develop the specification for it
and then implement it.

The work required will be identified by the 0.8 analysis,
then we can decide on the breakdown of work and time
schedules.

If you have some suggestions or proposals, we would like
to hear them. Of course when I say ''we'', I always mean
Brailcom and all other contributors involved in the project.

In the meantime, Brailcom is reworking the Free(b)Soft website
so that it can include better communication tools and a new section
for the Speech Dispatcher development, including the roadmap and
a wiki. We are also working on setting up the bug tracking system
we have informed about earlier. The website is also going to include
a user-oriented section on the accessibility tools, which we are currently
missing. These features will however come gradually, not all at once,
according to our possibilities :)

Best regards,
Hynek Hanke