To answer all of you at once. I based it on the 3 previous announcements which were offered as examples. And then I added some details which I thought Inkscape users would find interesting. I didn't try to make a major diversion from previous announcements.
I'm an Inkscape user. I know little to nothing about development or coding. If what I wrote sounds like it is from a developer's or coding perspective, it's because I based it on the 3 previous announcements which were referenced. And for details, I consulted the release notes -- also written by developers, I guess.
If the goal is to write something that most Inkscape users can understand, that's a whole different story than what the original message requested.
Also note that I don't know much about marketing either. If you want something that looks like marketing, I'm not your person.
I would leave off filters. While new filters are always great, they probably are not of the same importance as the above.
I wonder if that's more of a developer's perspective? As an Inkscape user, the new filters is one of the new things that I anticipate the most. And I know other users do too, because of comments I've seen in forums.
- Performance improvements: Give numbers: rendering speed, memory use.
Likewise as an Inkscape user, the new renderer seems to me like the highlight of the whole release! Inkscape users may know more than you think they do. I know this is a highly anticipated feature! Much more than the new Measurement tool and improvements to the other tools. I didn't include rendering speed and memory use, because as an Inkscape user, the numbers don't matter to me. What I see happening on the canvas is what matters.
The paragraph mentioning our 4 year gap can probably be excluded entirely. Let's not point out our failure to get the release done earlier.
Now THAT sounds like a developer being critical of his own work! I rather thought the 5 interim bug fix releases in only 4 years was impressive, plus a new major release to top it off!
Anyway, I'll try to write something that announces the new version to Inkscape users. But again, I don't know anything about marketing. So it will be just me, an Inkscape user and not much else, explaining the new version to other Inkscape users.
If anyone else wants to do this, they should go ahead. I was just trying to save you guys some extra work, and it looked like an easy thing to do. But it sounds like you want something quite different than what was presented, and I may not have the skills to do it, as far as marketing.
Anyway, thanks for your comments :-)
-------------------------------------------------- From: "Tavmjong Bah" <tavmjong@...8...> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2014 2:58 AM To: "Elisa Godoy de Castro Guerra" <elisa.dcg@...400...> Cc: "Brynn" <brynn@...3133...>; "Inkscape-Devel" Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Fw: [Inkscape-user] Release Marketing
On Mon, 2014-12-08 at 09:51 +0100, Elisa Godoy de Castro Guerra wrote:
Hi,
i was waiting for the meeting to discuss a point. I can translate into french. But reading the document i notice a problem.
Second me, all these documents are really code oriented. Who are the target of Inkscape : the artist ? Then i think we should creat some text, document marketing or example showing new feature, or pointing very good feature in Inkscape. Actually the first sentences are all oriented to the code, who is not attractiv for designer people.
Brynn, Thanks for taking the initiative on this.
I agree with Elisa that the press release must be targeted towards end-users. We developers already know the details.
I would re-order the paragraphs:
- An introduction to Inkscape without the history.
"The Inkscape community is happy to announce the release of Inkscape 0.91. Inkscape is ...
See http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Hackfest2015#The_Pitch
- New/Improved tools. Why are these important? What can the user do
with the Measurement tool? What is the purpose of the Symbols dialog? It could be interesting to point out that it can read Visio symbol libraries. What is the purpose of the the Trace Pixel Art feature?
Newly supported file formats.
New extensions: highlight a few.
Performance improvements: Give numbers: rendering speed, memory use.
You can briefly mention the Cairo library but most end-users won't know anything about Cairo and they won't care when and who did the work.
I would leave off filters. While new filters are always great, they probably are not of the same importance as the above.
The paragraph mentioning our 4 year gap can probably be excluded entirely. Let's not point out our failure to get the release done earlier.
Tav