[Bug 744918] Update Help Manual for Mike Alexanders mods to Advanced Portfolio Rpt

[John Ralls]

> On Mar 21, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> Technically that is correct.
> 
> However the unstable releases are not the focus of development. They are only pre-releases 
> intended for testing. They all eventually lead up to a "major/minor release" in the next stable 
> series. And that release is the relevant one, not the unstable releases.
> 
> So I think you can mention unstable releases, yet explain that git-master will lead up to the 
> next "major/minor release" or stable release series.
> 
> You'll note that I keep adding "major" as I really have issues with calling these big updates 
> "minor". Perhaps we can have a brainstorm over this among developers and interested 
> commmunity members.

Yeah, I agree. Major releases are when the middle number changes and minor releases are when the 3rd number changes. Minor releases are by policy bug-fix only. (That should be in the wiki along with the numbering system). The first number changes only when we make huge architectural changes: The last one, from 1 to 2 involved changing most of the code from Scheme to C *and* upgrading the GUI from Gtk1 to Gtk2. I think completing the C++ rewrite of the engine including making it SQL query driven instead of all in memory will merit a first-number change to 3, but I'm not going to promise that that will be done by 2017 so there will probably be a 2.8 series before we're ready for 3.0. If we subsequently change the GUI that might warrant another first-number change. But what's a good name for first-number releases? "Catastrophic" is probably correct, but isn't really an image we want to project for user recruitment. "Enormous", "Earth-shaking", and so on sound silly. How about "Global" or "Fundamental" to indicate that the way the program works is different from before?

Regards,
John Ralls