2.18 release notes items

Major changes in GNOME 2.18, to be mentioned in the release notes. Please make a list here when we reach feature freeze.

Please note that this does not need to be pretty. It's just a list that will be used to make the actual release notes. In fact, if it's too pretty, people will link to it and complain that it's not perfect.

See also the advice about the [:ReleaseNotes:schedule and translation] and [:GnomeMarketing/GnomeProjectStatuses: project statuses].

TableOfContents

How-to

Major changes are those that:

• affect lots of people (users, admins, developers alike).
• is related to something people already talk about.

Planned changes

This is a list of changes that are planned for 2.18. This will help the marketing team. Make sure to move the implemented changed to another section below.

• New control center shell.

The pages in CategoryRoadMap were supposed to collect such information. For example you can find there plans for particular applications like GEdit or Epiphany and the list of [http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArchitecture/Progress announced changes] on brachpoint for 2.18.

Feature improvements

• GDM
  • Now supports custom commands so that additional commands to appear in the Options/F10 Menu can be specified.

  • GDM now supports D-Bus via ConsoleKit.

  • gdmsetup now supports many more configuration options.
  • New sockets command FLEXI_XNEST_USER and FLEXI_XSERVER_USER. This is used to start login procedure by programs like gnome-screensaver and the Fast User Switch applet.
• Metacity now supports v2 of the theme system, including a bunch of changes to make life easier for theme authors.
• GNOME Power Manager can now control processor frequency scaling, and save lots more power.
• Vino (Gnome Remote Access) now has a notification icon when there is someone connected. You can disconnect any remote machine from that icon.

• EyeOfGnome now has a revamped printing interface based on GtkPrint, and allows autorotation based on EXIF information.

• Epiphany:
  • lists both title and URL in the address entry dropdown
  • opens the target folder when a download completes
  • now supports page ranges and prints background images by default.
• Evince
  • Option to open a copy of the current document in a new window. Multiple instances of the same document in different windows.
  • History: toolbar item with a dropdown menu to go back to previous pages in documents with internal links (PDF, djvu)
  • Improve printing: Added page setup dialog and support for printing to a PDF file.
  • Presentation mode:
    • Screensaver is detected and stopped during presentation
    • Added "End of presentation" page
    • Allow blanking screen by pressing 'w' (to fill with white) or 'b' (to fill with black)
    • Popup dialog with an entry to allow jumping to another page
    • Page transition support. At the moment only page duration is supported, but not transition effects.
• Big list of control center improvements
  • new shell and bugs fixed go here
  • [wiki:gnomebug:393697 new MIME type for themes (renamed .tar.gz/.tgz to .gtp)]
  • gnome-theme-properties supports the new GTK color schemes
  • [wiki:gnomebug:383066 new composite bling volume control window]
  • [wiki:gnomebug:363665 Typing break window is composited]
• New developer tools suite. Tools include Glade (v3) and Devhelp.
• Tomboy:
  • Bullet point support, lines starting with '*' or '-' are automatically turned into bulleted lists.
  • Improved search interface, a "firefox like" search bar at the bottom of notes gnomebug:348023
  • Notes can be "pinned" so they are always visible in the notes menu
  • Backlinks plugin which shows which notes link the current one gnomebug:385551
• Deskbar-Applet:

  • Easily install new handlers using Drag & Drop

  • Recent files handler has been added
  • Added support for Firefox 2.0 search engines
• Seahorse: (New for 2.18)
  • Nautilus integration - Encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify from the context menu
  • Gedit plugin - Encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify any text file
  • Epiphany plugin - Encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify any text field
  • Panel applet - Encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify the contents of the clipboard
  • Manage gnome-keyring passwords and stored secrets
  • Manage OpenPGP keys
  • Manage SSH keys
  • Provides a GUI interface for caching SSH and OpenPGP passphrases
  • Allows storing of passphrases in gnome-keyring
  • Avahi OpenPGP key sharing
  • DBus Interface for encryption operations
  • Provides libcryptui for standardized encryption dialogs and widgets
• gnome-games:

  • ["glChess"] and GnomeSudoku have been added to gnome-games. ["Ataxx"] has been removed, based on a usage-survey.

  • Gnibbles, Iagno and Four-in-a-Row now have Internet [:GnomeGames/Multiplayer:multiplayer] support.

• Bug Buddy: (New for 2.18)
  • More system information included on bug reports
  • Allow application developers to add extra informtation to bug reports
  • Detect privacy-sensitive words and warn the user about them
• Dictionary: (New for 2.18)
  • Better formatting (highlight phonetics)
  • Thai dictionary source
• Gnome-media:
  • Now includes AAC and MP3 profiles for audio encoding (e.g. for in sound-juicer), including autodetection of installed elements in GStreamer, such that those only display when you actually have the proper plugins installed
  • Gnome Volume Control now has a reasonable layout for advanced sound cards, such as the Audigy 2
  • It is now possible to enable/disable individual components during compilation, useful for low-space packages or distros that don't want to enable deprecated components
• network-admin (g-s-t)
  • improved network locations.
  • essid detection now also displays signal strength.
• Eye of GNOME now auto-rotates images based on its EXIF orientation info.

• Rhythmbox have a new [http://www.jamendo.com/ Jamendo] plugin allowing users to listen (streaming) and download more than 20000 tracks for free.

  • it's not part of the Desktop. VincentUntz

• Evolution
  • Customizable fetching of IMAP headers.
• Your changes here.

Usability improvements

• GDM
  • now supports "combo-style" custom lists, and the language and session choices can be displayed directly on the gdmgreeter theme with such a list.
  • GDM greeter themes can specify alternative pixbuf images to be displayed and will use the first one it finds.
  • The face browser widgets will not be displayed on the theme if there are no users to display.
  • The "OK" and "Start Again" buttons are now sensitive/insensitive in a more sensible way.
  • The default gdmgreeter themes demonstrate these new features.
• Epiphany now uses more Tango style icons and shows favicons in the address entry dropdown.
• Baobab now has a ringchart view for displaying the disk usage of a folder; it also dropped the "search" option, since it replicated the Search Tool.
• Bug Buddy
  • Lot of UI cleanups.
  • Show report on a separate window
  • Removed tool bar
  • Non block the UI while debuggin with gdb
• Dictionary
  • Links between entries work again
  • Selecting a word and opening a new window will automatically look up the selection
  • Allow editing of dictionary sources
• Screenshot
  • Show an interactive dialog when launching from the menu (or from a launcher)
• Evince now uses current document thumbnail as window icon.
• Eye of GNOME has a new simple and powerful printing UI
• time-admin (g-s-t)
  • improved GUI
  • added hability to synchronize once with the time server (Ubuntu had patches for this before, a new solution is now upstream for any supported platform)
• users-admin (g-s-t): improved, simplified GUI
• Your changes here.

Performance improvements

• GNOME Power Manager memory usage down from 2.7Mb to 1.7Mb on typical laptop system.
• Epiphany utilizes GLib's new g_timeout_add_seconds to reduce context switches and improve CPU/power efficiency.
• Bud Buddy:
  • Faster start up
• Evolution-Exchange
  • Faster Autocompletion with Global Address List caching
  • Improved performance in Folder operations and Public Folder subscriptions.
• Your changes here.

Internationalization and accessibility improvements

• Pango now supports rendering vertical text! It is used to correctly render Chinese and Japanese menu labels and clocks in vertical panels. More labels to follow the change.

  • maybe this can be copied to major changes section? GilForcada

• The panel works really better in RTL environments
• Epiphany now has correct secure location bar colouring with dark themes.
• gnome-mag
  • Added support to the X Composite Extension, making possible full screen magnification!
  • Added support to colorblind filters.
  • Added brightness manipulation support.
  • Corrected the contrast filtering behavior.
  • Removed a memory leak that make the magnifier use more then 500mb in 30 minutes!
• gnome-speech
  • New drivers for Loquendo, Cepstral Swift, eSpeak
  • Better support for Chinese with the IBMTTS engine
• Orca
  • (WDW - lots of stuff to be added)

Back-end improvements and code cleanups

• FUSA now uses nonblocking, unthreaded code to communicate with GDM.
• gnome-system-tools will be using liboobs and a DBus based communication with system-tools-backends, allowing a more dynamic communication, better error detection and other improvements
• Evolution - Migration to gtk-print

Future: Plans for the next release

These items are used to compile a preview for the next release. Please enter and updates planned changes for GNOME 2.20 in the [wiki:RoadMap roadmap].

Draft

[wiki:/Draft Starts here]

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