The state of charting

[Gervase Markham]

[This is the third time I've tried to send this! Fat fingers...]

[Update: since I wrote this, you've branched for 2.20. How does that
affect things?]

Dear developers,

First, an apology for having dropped the ball on New Charts for so long.
I understand that at least one New Charts-related bug is a release blocker.

I'd like to knock them into shape, and work out the minimum possible
work to do that. I'd like feedback on whether this is the right
approach, and whether it fits with current release plans, or if it's too
much too late - and, if so, what an alternative plan might be.

The major change I feel is necessary is to link products directly to
their series categories. I made an original design decision not to do
this; it was probably the wrong one. People expect the category name to
change if the product gets renamed, and for the category to pick up the
product's visibility. There are several technical issues - for example,
how do you merge product IDs (1-based, incrementing) with category IDs
(1-based, incrementing) without clashes? How do you migrate from where
we are to establishing a link?

There's no bug number for this, but it would reduce the need for the UI
planned in bug 257346 (the release blocker).

I also want to:

- Remove the "frequency" stuff - it's over-engineered and causes
     display problems when showing series with different frequencies. Bug
     288148 and bug 238835.

- Improve debuggability - we get loads of questions in the newsgroups.
     Bug 286724 and any other ideas people might have.

- Change the idea of a "creator" to an "owner", and allow admins to
     change who it is. This solves some practical issues. Bug 288150 or
     bug 257350.

What do you think?

Gerv