Public release timetable suitable for users

[r0ml]

Claus Reinke has proposed:

The idea is simply to have a single dated news item that lists current and next release versions, either with date or with reasons for delays, and to add a link to the release timetable for more detailed information (since the platform logo is used elsewhere, it might be good to provide a variant with automatically overlaid version number).

http://projects.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-platform/2010-May/000972.html

In particular,

More generally, could the current status of the platform please be made obvious early on its webpages? Currently, a visit looking for such info might go like this:

1. http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/ doesn't say anything about versions or timelines
2. http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/contents.html gives GHC versions, without linking them to HP versions or timelines
3. http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/windows.html lists current version and timeline of older versions (good), but does not state that the current version is a beta, nor does it indicate that there is a stable version due, or what problems are keeping the beta from becoming stable
4. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Platform does not offer much info, but seems to be the only page linking to
5. http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ no current version info, release time table is only for package maintainers, none of the "open bug reports" has a 2010.x milestone
6. http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/ReleaseTimetable THERE!-) This is the information I was looking for, at least part of it! But where is the rest?

I suggest the following changes as a minimum improvement:

• link to 6 directly from 1 (even better: insert cute calendar with highlighted release timelines on 1!-)
• add current version overview for each OS to 1 (in case the per-OS versions are out of sync)
• add trac links to 6 that list the showstopper tickets for the current release (this assumes that the showstoppers have trac tickets and, preferably, milestone and severity information)
• add info about next release and blocking issues to 3 (and to the other OS-specific pages) - downloaders should not have to guess that the current version is a beta, or what problems have been found with it

[r0ml]

I believe the vast majority of this has now been addressed. The only thing remaining is to clean up the wiki page.