Calendar:Release Notes

Sunbird 0.3 alpha2 Release Notes (Draft)

On [DAY] [MONTH] 2006, the Sunbird/Calendar project released Sunbird 0.3 alpha2. This marks the second official release Sunbird since the lengthy task of rewriting the backend code was undertaken. Sunbird 0.3 alpha2 marks the second milestone on the roadmap towards a final Sunbird 0.3. These release notes are intended to provide a clear picture of what users should and should not expect in this version.

Goals of the 0.3 alpha2 Release

Sunbird 0.3 alpha2 is not intended to be a production-quality release. (See "Limitations and Known Bugs". Instead, it is being released largely in order to showcase/test the advanced new view code. This includes:

• Inline editing of event titles
• Restoration of drag and drop editing in the day/week views

In addition to showcasing and testing the new views, Sunbird 0.3a2 aims to provide users of Sunbird 0.3a1 with a new release that contains a large number of bug fixes for many of the issues identified in that release. This includes:

• Ability to modify individual elements of a recurring event
• Fewer import/export errors
• Better error reporting
• Improved alarm functionality
• A new, more intuitive New Event dialog
• Better Mac support
• and lots of other minor bug fixes

Limitations and Known Bugs

Before using Sunbird 0.3 alpha2, it is strongly encouraged that you read the following limitations that the release possesses.

• Dataloss may occur if you attempt to use Sunbird with calendar files created by other calendaring programs.
• CalDAV support remains extremely basic
• Shutting down Sunbird immediately after a change has been made (within 5 seconds) may result in the change not being recorded.
• Sunbird 0.3a2 does not work for dates before 1970 or after 2031
• Snooze functionality is not currently present.
• Alarms for recurring events may not be reliable.

Additionally, many of the Surprising Behaviors of Lighting apply to Sunbird 0.3a2.

Regressions from 0.3a1

As development is ongoing, a few items remain in a worse state than they were in the 0.3a1 release:

• If you have conflicting events at one time in the calendar, other, non-conflicting events on the same day appear narrower than they should
• Location/Description information is no longer shown in the day/week views.
• All day events simply appear with no time, rather than having a Star icon
• It is not possible to select multiple events in the views. It still remains possible to select multiple events in the unifinder.

The Next Step

The current roadmap for Sunbird development lists this release as the last alpha release on the way to Sunbird 0.3. The next planned release of Sunbird is planned to be Sunbird 0.3 beta, which only has the goal of fixing bugs identified in this release, in an effort towards creating a final, production quality release. While new features are not directly planned for Sunbird 0.3 beta, ongoing parallel development of Lightning 0.2 may result in additional features being implemented in this next release as well.

Users wishing to follow the progress towards this beta release should feel free to download nightly builds. As always, testing and good bug reports are always greatly appreciated.