Speech dispatcher 0.8 branch created in git.

[Luke Yelavich]

Hey folks.
Just letting you know what my plans are going forward with Speech Dispatcher 
0.8 related development. I have created a branch in git speech-dispatcher-0-8, 
and any bug fixes worth pulling into the 0.8 releases will be put in that 
branch. All changes in that branch since 0.8.1 are cherry-picked from master. 
Any further changes that are done in master will be considered as to whether 
they are worthwhile for 0.8 on a case by case basis. As it is, I wasn't 
thinking of doing a 0.8.2 release, but the change of the licenses of the API to 
LGPL 2.1 warranted a release ASAP, so I took all relevant bugfixes and small 
improvements to put into 0.8.2.

Normally there are pre-releases to get wider testing, but I strongly feel in 
this instance that the changes are small and isolated enough that things should 
be ok, its a few API additions plus translation improvements.

I am working on stuff that is 0.9 material, but I think there will be future 
0.8 based releases when there are enough important bug fixes to warrant it. 
Having said that, if new features are added to master that are useful/important 
enough, they may go into a 0.8 release.

Another reason for continuing to put out 0.8 based releases is a recent change 
in master that increases the glib requirement from 2.28 to 2.32. Granted most 
distros are well past that these days, but it means that it will be possible to 
put out releases of speech dispatcher that can still be used on distros from 
circa 2012 that have longer term support, i.e Ubuntu 12.04 etc.

As well as the glib version change, there are other commits in master since 
0.8.1 that are not in 0.8.2, notably the pitch range additions. So far as I am 
aware, these have not been widely tested. I know I haven't tested them myself, 
so I was reluctant to include that addition. Sufficient testing would see pitch 
range functionality included in a future 0.8 release if demand warrants it.

Going forward, I'm thinking of doing a 0.8 based release every couple of 
months, depending on commit activity, and depending on whether commits to 
master should be released sooner rather than later. Of course if you think 
something should be in a 0.8 release and its in master, please feel free to 
speak up. I have no ETA on 0.9, but it will likely include functionality 
changes that were points of discussion in the roadmap thread, and I don't want 
releases of bug fixes to die off in the meantime.

Thanks once again to all who are helping out with development of Speech 
Dispatcher.

Luke