Re: It is time for a feature freeze (it is NOW or never).

[Stefan Monnier]

>     I still think this is a bad idea -- it cannot be done without potentially
>     destabilizing the trunk which is currently in a very stable state, and
>     thus in a pretty unique state of "readiness for release".

> We could urge all the pretesters to try out the unicode branch now.
> That way we would get a picture of how far it is from readiness.

What's the problem with releasing from the current trunk ASAP instead?
Based on feedback from the few non-latin-only users I know, the trunk's
unicode support is "good enough" and is a major improvement over
Emacs-21.3.

There's no shortage of improvements in the current trunk.  Trying to merge
the unicode branch before the next release would just delay the release of
those improvements.  Maybe it would end up releasing the unicode-branch
a bit earlier, but I'm wondering why the unicode branch should be
considered so much more important than all those other features.
What concrete improvement does it bring to the user that's so valuable
compared to all the rest that's already in the trunk (i.e. utf-8 CJK
support, customizable fringes, many new packages, extra bundled manuals,
the list in NEWS is already much too long).


        Stefan