[wp-hackers] 1.5.2 or on to 1.6?

[Owen Winkler]

Peak Discharge wrote:

>I vote 1.6 as well, leaving 1.5.2 as a possible bug fix release. I
>would especially love to see exhibit 2 in WordPress 1.6. I remember
>Owen said he'll release it once 1.5.1 is out, but there was no word
>from him regarding this for some time so I'm guessing he's going to
>leave it for 1.6. Oh well...
>  
>
Yeah, that's the plan.  Poorly coordinated with a server move, second 
child rearing, and paid work ramp-up, but that's the plan.

My other input on the 1.6 v 1.5.2 issue:

Someone says something about redesigning the dashboard.  I don't know if 
any of you stopped by my site on FFAF, but the CSS redesign work that 
Joe Kohlmann did for the admin interface is pretty darn sweet - *I* love 
it.  I can't remember if it's the same as what I have on my site, but 
this plugin download (http://asymptomatic.net/downloads/wp/adred.zip) is 
a good taste of what it offers.  I wrote the plugin, not the CSS or 
images.  If the admin menu can be made into dynamic CSS, it would solve 
the most major irritation I have with WP at the moment.  Followed 
immediately by the unsolved link manager crappiness, which would be 
solved in 1.6.

Unit testing for a major version update should be a priority.  It's not 
something I like suggesting, but getting some code coverage info would 
do wonders for working bugs out like what caused issues for 1.5.1.  I 
don't know what tool could be used for this in PHP, but something's got 
to be out there.  If everyone on the testers list used it, we could 
hopefully not only ensure that every byte of code is tested, but 
determine what went wrong while testing occurred.  Who knows, we could 
even save some time by doing proper regression testing.  A good tool 
would be a boon here.

Another wishlist item for a major revision: RSS plugin hooks.  Can we 
consider rolling in an existing class to handle this?  Something like 
this would be nice: $class->items = $posts; $class->output('RSS2');

Also, Magpie in WP is broken.  Getting it to do things other than what 
WP already does isn't difficult, but it could be made easier and more 
error-free if Magpie wasn't somewhat mangled.  And do we even use Snoopy 
anywhere? (Can't remember if I found one reference or not.)

Finally, WordPress looks good now, and the 1.6 features already listed 
on the Codex are killer.  But I think we still need a showstopper.  With 
a new release I don't want WordPress to be the software that best does 
what all the other blogging software can do - I want WordPress to do 
that one thing extra that everyone else has to catch up on, and all the 
non-WP bloggers envy.

Ignore my fantasy features if you might-- I still want all the features 
on the Codex v1.6 wishlist.  1.6 all the way.

Owen