Application of UIFEs

[John Lea]

On 05/10/12 12:11, Matthew East wrote:
> 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.

Yes, I think it is exactly the question of what impact visual changes 
have on screenshots that needs clarification.

Do we fix the 'pixelated app icons in the App Lens' bug even if this 
would mean that the implementation would be slightly different from the 
screenshot in the documentation?

Would any users be confused by this difference?

If we have to choose between:

a) fixing a visual bug in the Ubuntu interface (which is seen by all our 
users every day)

b) not fixing the bug in the Ubuntu interface so that the documentation 
screenshots are 100% consistent with the implementation.

Which is the right choice?


>
> 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.

Agreed about respecting freezes, but respecting freezes is a different 
discussion.

Even if new features get landed on time, there will always be bugs, so 
these questions would still be relevant.  Of course if the new features 
had landed earlier this cycle we would have had more time to fix bugs, 
but there will always be some bugs.


>
> Matt