[rfc] news layout tweak

[Brian de Alwis]

On 11-Mar-2009, at 4:04 PM, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
>> FWIW, I prefer Karl's approach.  I rarely run RCs, and would prefer
>> seeing the changes between the previous release.
>
> I'm not sure if you realize that for final releases, we always include
> the complete release notes since the previous final release. It just
> divides things up to separate out what happened in an RC.

I did realize that, and I personally think it's better to *not*  
separate out by the appropriate RC at all.  I agree with Karl's  
specific suggestion:

On Mar 10, 2009; at 03:18 PM, Karl Fogel wrote:
> This is a major improvement, but there is an argument for not listing
> RCs at all in the release notes:
[...]
> Release candidates are an implementation detail in the process of  
> making
> a release.  While they involve some users (testers), they are not of
> interest to most users, and for that majority, they are a  
> distraction if
> listed in the release notes.


Then the important stuff can be put at the top.

[Tongue slightly in cheek:]  As a further justification, a higher  
number of RCs can even scare off a user as it may indicate a release  
that had a lot of teething problems and that may continue to have  
problems.

The Eclipse Project, to compare, maintains a New & Noteworthy list of  
new features.  For each milestone release, they only list the changes  
to the previous milestone (e.g., 3.3 M1 -> M2): this is oriented  
towards the keen beans who track milestone by milestone.  But for the  
final release, the list is the total as compared to the previous  
release (e.g., 3.2 -> 3.3).  This benefits from the fact that the  
final release should identical to the last milestone (they have  
release candidates too, but they are treated identically to milestones  
and have no new features).

Brian.

-- 
"Amusement to an observing mind is study." - Benjamin Disraeli