Stable 1.8.0 coming up this Sunday

[Christian Stimming]

All,

The stable gnucash version 1.8.0, our first stable version after almost 
6 months, is scheduled to be released this Sunday/Monday.

During the last release candidate versions, we got Gnucash into a pretty 
good shape, and now I think we managed to fix all outstanding 
showstopper bugs in there. I was the last one who complained about 
serious bugs (with respect to multi-currency register UI issues), but 
those have been fixed nicely now. Bugzilla still hovers at 56 normal 
bugs but is down to 7 major bugs, and none of the major ones actually 
complains about any problems with the core functionality. Therefore I 
have a quite good feeling about moving ahead with the stable release 
this weekend.

With a new stable release there is still some work to be done. We need to

* update the README and

* write a "What's new in 1.8"-Document 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99456 , probably in 
gnucash-docs, referenced in a Tip-of-the-Day 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95602 and the README.

* A press release needs to be written. 
http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2001-June/003918.html was 
our last one, and I'm also going to write a German press release 
http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2001-June/003921.html 
probably similar to the openhbci announcement 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=2649500

Which topics should be covered in the press release? I guess that's 
mostly what has been mentioned in each of the release candidate 
announcements, as seen on http://www.gnucash.org . I think the really 
"easy-to-sell" new features are:

- Scheduled Transactions
- Small Business Accounting Features
- OFX Import
- (Germany) HBCI Support

and additionally the following new features might get mentioned but 
don't have to:

- Mortgage & Loan Repayment Druid
- New User Manual and Help
- New Multi-Currency Transaction Handling
- Redesigned Menus

What do people think? Can somebody please write up an English press 
release?  (My English is not good enough for that)

Christian