groff 1.24.0 readiness status, and release notes

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi folks,

tl;dr: Please nominate items for the groff 1.24.0 release announcement!

I'd like to soft-freeze[1] the groff "Core" code as Savannah puts it
(meaning the [gnt]roff commands and the "libgroff" internal static
library).  I've achieved all of the goals (on a freshly shortened list)
that I had for the formatter and I would like to get a final release out
before the new year.

That means doing a release candidate soon.  That way I learn how to sign
Git tags and upload to alpha.gnu.org.

I aim to follow the process familiar from the groff 1.22.4 and 1.23.0
releases.  The difference is that I have a maintainer bit now.  (And I
get to verify that my maintainer bit actually _works_ for the functions
it is supposed to.)

Dave Kemper called my initial set of goals for 1.24 "wildly
ambitious"[2] and while I didn't openly argue with him, internally I
kind of did.  But the shadows grow long and the days grow short.

There are still 5 release goal tickets open:

A.  bug #62830: [PATCH] [grops] support CJK fonts encoded in UTF16
B.  bug #63583: [PATCH] [grotty] use terminfo library
C.  bug #63827: withdraw contrib/pdfmark
D.  bug #65098: [PATCH] [gropdf] support `SS` font
E.  bug #66031: @g@-ify our Texinfo manual

I expect to work on these imminently and while awaiting RC feedback.
There are also some macro package bugs I'd like to look at, time
permitting, like the recently discovered #66439 in groff mm.

Any release goal ticket that is too hard to achieve in this limited time
window, I expect to defer.

Then I expect to declare a hard freeze on all code and do an RC2.

Documentation revisions will continue up until final release.  I'm
hoping to avoid an RC3.

I think there's just about enough time left in the year for that.
Experience shows that any feedback that doesn't come within 2 weeks of
a release candidate announcement is unlikely to ever arrive.

As with groff 1.23.0, I ask the readers of this list to nominate items
for the release announcement.  I can't put the whole 1.24 section of the
NEWS file in--that would be too long.

Please review the NEWS file and reply to this thread with your
suggestions.  It is helpful to me to have perspectives other than my own
on what users will consider noteworthy.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/NEWS

This is also an excellent time to point out anything I neglected to put
into the NEWS file in the first place!

I will incorporate these items into the RC and final announcement
template.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/ANNOUNCE

For your statistical pleasure, 199 Savannah tickets are marked as fixed
in the 1.24.0 release, and the number of automated tests has grown from
about 160 to 227.

Summarizing "git diff 1.23.0 origin", we have:

 695 files changed, 93176 insertions(+), 54086 deletions(-)

I hope you are looking forward to the release as much as I am.

Regards,
Branden

[1] I think of a "soft freeze" as prohibiting any changes that aren't
    necessary to resolve a release-critical bug.
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2024-09/msg00113.html

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