In the comment section on the last entry, Viswanath has asked whether the next release of Flamingo is nearing. I do not have definitive answer to this question, as the goal of release 4.0 of Flamingo is to close all the existing functionality gaps. The original internal plan was to allocate 20 weeks for this release cycle, placing the final release at the end of January 2009. For this release i will follow the same cutoff dates as for Substance releases: release candidate two weeks before the final release, and core feature freeze four weeks before the release candidate.

This would currently place the core feature freeze in mid December, and this may prove a little over optimistic. Instead of shrinking the cool-off period between the core feature freeze and release candidate, especially given significant amount of new functionality, the final release may shift a few weeks into February 2009. This should give enough time for both the development of the missing pieces, and community feedback on the new functionality.

On a related note, JIDE has regrettably decided to stop their work on ribbon component. Competition is always good, and not only for the potentials users. Substance has benefitted greatly not only from the prior work (especially Quaqua and Looks), but also from the ongoing development of Nimbus and Synthetica. While i might not have always agreed with the marketing pitches (especially the 56K number for Nimbus which is quite irrelevant since it cannot run outside 6u10), the competition has created a welcome and tangible pressure that ensured continued work on improving and evolving various aspects of Substance.