[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 17th Skype meeting of the release 4.5 team

Tue Nov 9 18:31:14 CET 2010

Hi dear friends,

Yesterday we hold our 17th Skype meeting for the 4.5 release. We were
complete: Ben van't Ende (community manager), Olly Hader (core team
leader), Benni Mack (4.4 release manager), Steffen Kamper (4.5 technical
leader) and Ernesto Baschny (4.5 release manager).

=====================================================================
Topics from last week
=====================================================================

See [1].

* UTF-8 by default: Benni will put it on the core list soon, as it is
already ready. Stucki can review later also.
* Reports module: Ernesto didn't contact Ingo yet, will do
* Indexed Search: Dmitry answered that he will work on IS this week.
* Admin Panel design: not solved yet, and wasn't discussed with the
Design team yet (no time today)
* "Native Speaker Team" also for use in core. Ben wanted to talk with
the guys. The topics of the meeting with Daniel Hinderik were others
(editorial stuff) and the topic was not touched.

[1]
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Minutes_16th_Meeting_2010-11-02

=====================================================================
Release related
=====================================================================

Grid View status update
------------------------------------------

Thomas gave some feedback and is 70% done with the project. He will
present a patch soon. Discussion will take place on a further meeting
with Joey on Tuesday 16h30.

New Extension Manager
------------------------------------------

Jeff finished his part on EM. He went through all the issues, and
synchronized the branch with current trunk.

Steffen is preparing the RFC for the new EM module *without* the new EM
(only class refactoring).

In RFC #16290 the naming of the classes were discussed. We decided to
rename the classes to tx_em_* to follow our convention.

Styling was already discussed with Jens in Stuttgart, Steffen will take
comments in account when presenting the RFC.

IM4 / IM5 deprecation
------------------------------------------

We talked a lot about the issue of deprecating IE4 and/or IE5 in TYPO3
Core. After plenty of discussions about pros and cons and potential
consequences, we came up with these arguments:

1. 4.5 is a LTS, and we want to stay backwards compatible, thus *support
for IE4+IE5 stays*.
2. We mark IE4+IE5 as *deprecated in 4.5*.
3. We form a "task force" which is meant to create a testbed to be able
to fix and see the effects of fixes on all potential variants more
easily. We should ask Jigal if he wants to support or even lead this team.
4. After having the test scenarios, we can start going over the bugs and
then we can decide if it makes our live easier by dropping support for
IE4+5 in 4.6 already.

Some other side-notes:

* Steffen Ritter had some trouble (also performance-wise) when creating
sprites with IM/GM, which is why they are now created using gdlib2.
* IM4 was the original supported graphical generation toolkit for TYPO3
("4.2.9" being the recommended version for a long time).
* IM5 was introduced later and since the API changed a lot, lots of
"switches" were added.
* GM came in as a fork to IE5 with the aim of providing a stable API,
which is why GM was recommended since TYPO3 4.0
* IM6 (and GM) switched the order of parameters for "composite"
* There are also many issues regarding: safe_mode, Windows vs Unix which
might not related to IE4 at all.

Versioning with IRRE
------------------------------------------

Olly has one problem still to work on, then he will forward-port the
fixes for 4.5 (current trunk). Benni offered his help when Olly comes to
the part where he needs to touch parts of TCEmain which were extracted
to "version" extension.

Workspace Team / Module
------------------------------------------

The team will have a Skype meeting at 18h. Olly will send the protocol
to the core team. Plan is to have every new feature in core list this week.

Currently the work is on GIT [2].

It was also suggested by Olly that the Workspaces team gets a status
like the DBAL "team" in future, meaning less bureocracy to get fixes
into the core.

[2] https://github.com/t3dev/typo3v4core/tree/workspace-bugfixes

Install Tool
------------------------------------------

Patrick worked on the install tool since the T3UXW09. There are lots of
stuff to be done for the Install Tool, but no one knew of a definitive
list of issues. Ben thinks there is none written down.

Ernesto just recalled some pending stuff:

* Streamline usability of Upgrade Wizard
* Translation of the Install Tool (e.g. French / German)
* Usability of "All Configuration"
* etc..

=====================================================================
Organizational
=====================================================================

Usability & Design team forge restructuring
---------------------------------------------

After our meeting on Friday with the design team, it was decided to
restructure the "Design & Usability" forge team pages a bit. Ernesto
explained the changes:

* One main project "Design" [3]
* Two sub projects:
  * "Usability team" [4]: (the old "HCI team"): Lars, Jens and the team,
providing new ideas, screen designs. The tracker is the central hub
where to discuss and develop new user interface options.
  * "Skin team" [5] (formerly known as "CSS team"): As soon as an issue
is approved by the Usability team, a new issue is created on the "Skin
team", which is then in charge of implementing the interface (CSS,
ExtJS, maybe some basic PHP).

The Skin team is being build right now, Ben is recruiting around 6
members to work on our backends CSS. There are already some tasks there,
like:

* Skinning the new WS module (#10642 and #10684)
* "Path" on Web>Page in the doc header, which will stay, needs to be
trimmed. Jens will come up with some mock-up first

Ernesto tried to contact the "server team" about an instance where to
test the new CSS features, but got no response yet. He'll try again.

As soon as we have the member list and workflow 100% defined, we will
announce it in an article.

Ernesto also discussed with Jens that the "HCI list" should die, keeping
only "the archives" [6]. Goal is to use only forge in future.

[3] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/design
[4] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/usability
[5] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/skin
[6] http://lists.typo3.org/pipermail/typo3-team-hci/

New Languages and translation start
------------------------------------------

We have "Khmer" as a new language. Ernesto asked when the "translation
workflow" will start. Olly explained that usually on first "beta" the
process begins, with Dmitry updating the server to that version and the
new labels being loaded.

@Ernesto will send an reminder on the translation mailing list that we
will have feature freeze soon and that the translation teams can start
"warming up the engines".

Related to labels, Steffen reminded of the additional work still missing
regarding the new labels we have for "page" and "tt_content", which
would be to adapt also the "CSH" labels to the new label names. Many
help text still refers to labels as they have been before and not the
new style. This has to be considered before people start translating.

Intro Package in French
------------------------------------------

The language speaking community would love to have a French language
intro package (with French content, French comments, etc). Peter Beernik
is in touch with Ernesto and the server team to try to make it happen
for beta2. As soon as we have the infrastructure settled, the French
language team could start working on it. Ben is the hub to communicate
with this team.

FAL (file abstraction layer) Code Sprint
------------------------------------------

We talked again about the "FAL code sprint" [7] that will happen on this
weekend in Düsseldorf (WMDB). Steffen will be there on Saturday. We have
good expectations and morale and motivation is high. We might have three
core developers (Rupi, Steffen, Ingmar) and several other developers, so
the chance to get things committed is high.

[7] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-fileabstractionlayer/wiki/Wiki

=====================================================================
Next meetings
=====================================================================

* "Page tree" meeting later that day (Steffen Kamper, Stefan Galinski)
* Workspaces team at 18h
* Grid View team Tuesday at 16h30
* Design Team vs Core Team on Friday 11h
* FAL code sprint this weekend

Cheers,
Ernesto