Re: [XBoard-devel] next release

[h.g. muller]

> Any objections to creating a 4.6.x branch?

I think a 4.6.x branch is a good idea. The enhancements we have
now compared to 4.5 make a pretty coherent set; I don't have
any immediate ideas for other features to add. (Note, however,
that not everything is in Savannah master yet, as I still have
stuff in branches outside hgmaster that complete patches that
were in hgmaster (the 'profile' branch). Yesterday I updated
the texi file, so at least the XBoard docs should be in good shape.

Major problems we still have with this version:

1) Most people won't be able to compile XBoard, because of the
gettext 0.17 vs 0.18 problem. I really consider that a disastrous
situation. Either we should switch off NLS by default, so that at
least the English users will be able to compile, or we should
somehow fix the configure process such that it can solve this.

2) Lack of a method to generate html docs (.chm files) for WinBoard.
The html docs are not updated at all since 4.5. I know that Arun
has been working on a method for converting texi to html, but
I have noidea what the status is, and if there can be expected
something operational from that soon. This is one of the things
that has top priority..

3) We still have to figure out the mime-type / file association stuff
for XBoard, and make that work.

4) WinBoard has problems reliably terminating engine processes
on a heavily loaded machine, when running a tournament. When I
run with ponder off on a dual there never is a problem, but with ponder
on more than half the engin processes keeps hanging in the task
manager, and when you kill them, WinBoard goes berserk with CPU
usage. This is still something that must be fixed.

5) XBoard Tournament Options dialog still lacks the 'Clone Tourney'
button. It also lacks the 'convenience buttons' to call up other menu
dialogs that you are likely to need, but the Generic popup is not
set up to support re-entrancy for transient dialogs.