F3D 2.5.0 Roadmap

[mwestphal]

2.5.0 is a minor release, so no breaking change are allowed.

Current roadmap

This part may be updated but may not contains all issues that will be addressed.
Please look at the milestone and the board for the exhaustive list.

1. Plugin framework consolidation

Our plugin framework is working very well, but it is missing one last feature

• Plugin specific options #1193

2. Format consolidation

We have added many file format support in the last few minor releases, let's consolidate them:

• Read EXR files from memory #1187
• USD: Implements subdivision #1178
• Ship usd and vdb plugins in the python wheels #1139
• Improve Alembic reader #913

3. Desktop integration improvements

Desktop integration has been on the backburner for a while, it would be nice to improve that in the coming months.
We may need to find experts of the respective OSes though:

• Windows meta issue: Improve Windows integration #21
• macOS meta issue: macOS package improvements #775
• FileAssociation is not working on windows f3d-superbuild#160
• Let F3D take as input a model via streaming rather than filename #1100

4. Window types and interactions

Recent work by @snoyer as well as input from @GitCodeBoy made us realize that we may want to provide more in terms of interoparabilty with window types and interactions. It is more of a discussion that actual issues to work on but this should move forward:

• Provide interaction for external window #418
• Integrate display to terminal in F3D #1246

5. Documentation efforts

Our doc system is reliable but it is lacking in many ways, improving it would go a long way:

• Add versioning in the documentation and a welcome page #845
• Improve/Augment examples #590
• Improve animation documentation #1258
• Improve Quickstart guide #1259
• Improve testing developement documentation #1260

6. QoL features

A few, highly requested features that stand out to me:

• Add a mobile version #27
• Animation freeze when interacting with mouse #25
• Add measurement tools similar to CAD software #119
• Add C bindings for the libf3d #1307

7. Any other help-wanted bug fix or feature

Any issues or features that is labeled with "help-wanted" could be part of 2.4.0 release