Application of UIFEs

[Matthew East]

On 5 October 2012 11:54, John Lea <john.lea at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> Forwarding to ubuntu-release,ubuntu-doc,and ubuntu-translators at Iain
> Lane's suggestion.
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Application of UIFEs
> Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:28:19 +0100
> From: John Lea <john.lea at canonical.com>
> To: product-strategy at lists.canonical.com
> CC: Sebastien Bacher <sebastien.bacher at canonical.com>, Didier Roche
> <didier.roche at canonical.com>, Jason Warner <jason.warner at canonical.com>,
> iain.lane at canonical.com, kate.stewart at canonical.com, Cristian Parrino
> <cristian.parrino at canonical.com>
>
>
> Hi All,
> Over the past week there have been a couple of cases where bug fixes
> have been IMHO incorrectly marked as requiring UIFEs.
> UIFEs are an important process step to make sure that string changes are
> translated and that users reading documentation are not confused.
> However visual bug fixes that do not involve string changes or bug fixes
> will not cause any user confusion if the documentation is not updated
> should not require a UIFE.

Please also take into account that documentation includes screenshots,
which are invalidated by changes to how the desktop or its components
look visually. We used to have two separate freezes, one involving
changes to strings, another involving changes to the user interface.
These have now been combined into a single "User Interface Freeze",
which applies to both types of change. I appreciate that not all
design changes will invalidate screenshots, but many of them have the
potential to, so this should be borne in mind as this discussion
proceeds.

This release has been absolutely horrendous from the point of view of
respecting freezes. Whatever solution is adopted, it is important that
there is not a general expectation that freezes are made to be broken
as there is a last minute rush to introduce fixes which could and
should have been raised much earlier.

Matt