well i cannot say a lot about core developpment, but on finalizing docs, the user_manual doc team is reaching to be ready for a kind of rewrite and i'm not sure if it could be done so early. As always, we'll do our best.
For official announcements, i could try to do some french announcement if none is already on the way. I've already alked about it with bryce, but to do this i'd need to get the official text some days befor so taht i can translate it and prepare a list.
pygmee
Feature Freeze. No further development work. Disable features that can't be finished in time Focus on critical bug fixing. Finalize all tutorials, docs, etc. Finalize all extensions Translators create translations. Inkscape must pass 'make distcheck'
Release. Post inkscape-0.46.tar.gz Post packages Post official announcements
Open development.