Glynn:

I'm starting to write the what's new guide for the next release? Have
any favourite features that you think should be included, please let me
know!

Following are some changes in the Desktop in the 2.28 release cycle
that might be worth a mention:

- Alan Coopersmith mentioned that the Xserver now supports VT.  GDM
  also now supports VT and users can now switch between VT sessions
  with the new "User Switcher" panel applet.  However, it should
  probably also be mentioned that the vtdaemon SMF service is off by
  default and users need to enable it for this feature to work.

- GDM was updated to version 2.28, which is a complete rewrite of
  the code, and ConsoleKit has been added to the system.  The new
  GDM has much better VT support than the old GDM, but does have
  a few notable regressions:

  - You can no longer launch the XDMCP chooser from the login screen.
  - There is no longer a GUI program for editing GDM configuration.
  - Support for gdmgreeter-style XML themes are no longer supported.

- OSS/Boomer has been integrated so now OpenSolaris has better sound
  driver support, and GStreamer-based programs now make use of the
  new oss4 GStreamer plugin to interface directly with the new OSSv4
  interfaces.  For example, gnome-volume-control now exposes a richer
  set of configuration options to the end user.

- The Shutdown/Restart dialog now support "fast reboot".

- Evince has been updated to the new 2.28 version.  It had previously
  been frozen at the 2.22 version due to the fact that it depends on
  a newer version of libgs which was added to OpenSolaris in the last
  release cycle.  The new version has significant improvements and now
  uses libspectre to render Postscript documents.

- GnuPG and GPGME were integrated and now gnome-keyring/seahorse
  supports GnuPG.

- The Java Access Bridge was removed and replaced with the new
  Java ATK Wrapper.

- We removed the elisa media player and replaced it with the new
  moovida media player.

- Jokosher and coherence are two new multimedia programs that were
  added.

- MusicBrainz was updated from the 2.x to 3.x version which is
  significantly better than the previous version.  MusicBrainz uses
  CDDB to determine CD album and song names when you play a CD in
  sound-juicer or rhythmbox.

- gobject-introspection, gir-repository were added, and clutter
  was updated to the 1.x version.  This makes it possible to easily
  add new exciting components like mutter and gnome-shell to the
  system if desired.

- GTK+ no longer has a hard dependency on mediaLib, and mediaLib
  is no longer shipped by default on the LiveCD.  Users will likely
  notice a small performance improvement when using GNOME if they
  install it.

- Most desktop programs have migrated from using Python 2.4 to
  Python 2.6.

- dogtail was removed from the desktop.

Reviewing the GNOME 2.28 release notes, I see that there isn't really a
lot of new stuff mentioned there that applies to OpenSolaris (since we
do not yet deliver gnome-bluetooth, empathy, and PulseAudio)

   http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.28/

Perhaps the information about cheese, evince and orca improvements
might be worth a mention.

Brian
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