In the 'What's new in the distribution' section the RN don't really show how much Debian has changed from woody to sarge. I've crafted (actually, rewritten) a tool I used for the previous RN to extract some statistics and I'm proposing the attached patch to include that info in the section. I still feel that this section is something that should be improved upon. Actually, most people that don't know anything about Debian will first read the Release Notes upon the announcement of the woody release Also, one thing that worries me is the order, why is the installation system (although an important part of the system) section first? Shouldn't it be ordered as follows: 2 What's new: "A lot has changed, we are very proud, bla bla bla..." 2.1 ... in the distribution "Lots of new software, bla bla bla" 2.2 ... in the installation system "Cool new system, bla bla" 2.3 ... in the supported architectures "Nothing new here, although you might want to know the kernel X Y Z" IMHO it should go from the bigger picture to the details, not the other way around... In any case, if nobody is against this patch I will apply it soon. If nobody is against the above changes I will reorder the sections and write some new content there too.. Regards Javier
Index: release-notes.en.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/debian-doc/ddp/manuals.sgml/release-notes/en/release-notes.en.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.28
diff -u -r1.28 release-notes.en.sgml
--- release-notes.en.sgml 16 May 2005 23:05:11 -0000 1.28
+++ release-notes.en.sgml 16 May 2005 23:28:07 -0000
@@ -146,6 +146,21 @@
</sect>
<sect id="newdistro"><heading>What's new in the distribution?</heading>
+<!-- JFS: To obtain these statistics run the 'changes-release.pl' script
+ in the source CVS. It will also present detailed information of what
+ has changed in the distribution between releases -->
+ <p>This new release of Debian includes much more software than
+ the previous &oldreleasename;, the distribution includes
+ over 9000 new packages
+<footnote>Notice that also a significant portion of packages have been
+removed from the distribution for different reasons. You will not
+see any updates for these packages and they will be marked as 'obsolete'
+in package management front-ends.</footnote>.
+ Also, most of the software in
+ the distribution has been updated, almost 6500 software packages
+ have been updated (73% of the &oldreleasename; distribution).
+ </p>
+
<p>To replace the aging, much-maligned, yet still popular
<package>dselect</package>, many apt frontends have been in
development during the woody release cycle. Interested users
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