A couple of things mentioned so far deal more with the packages of OpenACS as a whole and the management of these instead of the parts of 5.3 that we need to get out of the door.
Key features which we need in 5.3:
* Upgrade to 5.3 using the Repository. Forcing the download of a tarball or using CVS is perfect for us service providers, but should not be the default method.
* Simplyfication of the CORE CSS files. At the moment we have considerably too many CSS files in core, which makes them hard to maintain. Looking at this page I have lists.css,forms.css,default-master.css,site-master.css and main.css
* Mandatory install of XoTCL and TCLLib so package developers can rely on the enhanced functionality (well, both TIPs got approved, so it should be a no brainer, except update on documentation).
* Replace core functions with their faster XoTCL equivalents as written by Gustaf et.al., write a wrapper to make sure the function calls from older packages still work if necessary.
So far each release of the last OpenACS has provided some change in development paradigm. We should document these as well and make it clear that they were done intentionally. This sadly means we need to update our training material as well....
in 5.2 it is the TCL API
in 5.3 it will be XoTCL support
in 5.4 I wish for an ACS Object API along with a consistent Attribute Management System (AMS meets Dynamic Types meets Dynfields).
