Expand v2.1 release notes.

docs/releases/2.1.rst

@@ -7,22 +7,125 @@ Released: April, 2016
 What's new
 ==========
 
-- Upgrade to use Django 1.8.11.
-- Remove remaining references to Django's User model.
-- Remove included login required middleware using django-stronghold instead (http://mikegrouchy.com/django-stronghold/).
-- Improve generation of success and error messages for class based views.
-- Remove ownership concept from folders.
-- Replace strip_spaces middleware with the spaceless template tag.
-- Deselect the update checkbox for optional metadata by default.
-- Implement per document type document creation permission.
-- Make document type delete time period optional.
-- Fixed date locale handling in document properties, checkout and user detail views.
-- Add HTML5 upload widget.
-- Add Message of the Day app.
+Upgrade to use Django 1.8.11
+----------------------------
+With the end of life support for Django 1.7, moving to the next Mayan EDMS
+minor version was a target for this release. The Django minor release chosen was
+1.8 as it is very compatible with 1.7 and required minimal changes. Django 1.8
+is an LTS release (Long Term Support) meaning that is no new big feature of a
+new Django version is required, the project can stay in Django 1.8 for a good
+amount of time with no downsides.
+
+Remove remaining references to Django's User model
+--------------------------------------------------
+The few remaining hard code references to Django's User model that were missed
+in a previous release have been removed. Using a custom User model with Mayan
+should present very little if any obstacles.
+
+Remove included login required middleware
+-----------------------------------------
+The custom middleware include with Mayan EDMS that forces user to be
+authenticated before being able to access any view has been removed in favor of
+a dedicated 3rd party Django app for that purpose. The app chosen was
+django-stronghold (http://mikegrouchy.com/django-stronghold/).
+
+Improve generation of success and error messages for class based views
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+In the past success messages for actions would show a generic mention to the
+object being manipulated (document, folder, tag). Now the errors and success
+messages with be more explcit in describing what the view has or was trying
+to manipulate.
+
+Remove ownership concept from folders
+-------------------------------------
+Currently Folders in Mayan EDMS have a field that stores a reference to the
+user that has created that folders. One of the design decissions of Mayan EDMS
+is that there should never be any explicit ownership of any object. Ownership
+is relative and is defined by the Access Control List of an object. The
+removal of the user field from the Folders model brings this app in line with
+the defined behavior.
+
+Replacement of strip_spaces middleware with the spaceless template tag
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+As a size optimization technique HTML content was dynamically stripped of spaces
+as it was being served. The techique used involved detecting the MIME type of
+the content being served and if found to be of text/HTML type spaces between
+tags were stripped. An edge case was found where this did not worked always.
+The approached has been changed to use Django's official tag to strip spaces.
+In addition to using an official approach, the removal of spaces only happens
+when the template is compiled and not at each HTTP response. The optimization
+is minimal but since it happened at every response a small increase in speed
+is expected for all deployment scenarios.
+
+Deselect the update checkbox for optional metadata by default
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+During the last releases the behavior of the of metadata edit checkbox has seen
+several tune ups. Thanks to community feedback one small change has been
+introduced. The edit checkbox will be deselected by default for all optional
+document type metadata entries.
+
+Implement per document type document creation permission
+--------------------------------------------------------
+If is now possible to grant the document creation permission to a role for a
+document type. Previously document creation was a "blanket" permission. Having
+the permission meant that user could create any type of document. With this
+change it is now possible to restrict which types of document users of a
+specific role can create.
+
+Make document type delete time period optional
+----------------------------------------------
+The entries that defined after how long a document in the trash would be
+permanently deleted have been made optional. This means that if a document
+type has this option blank, the corresponding document of this type would never
+be deleted from the trash can.
+
+Fixed date locale handling in document properties, checkout and user detail views
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+A few releases back the ability to for users to set their timezone was added.
+This change also included a smart date rendering update to adjust the dates
+and times fields to the user's timezone. Some users reported a few views where
+this timezone adjustment was not happeding, this has been fully fixed.
+
+HTML5 upload widget
+-------------------
+A common request is the ability to just drap and drop documents from other
+windows into Mayan EDMS's document upload wizard. This release includes that
+capability and will also show a completion bar for the upload. Document
+uploading is sped up dramatically with this change.
+
+Message of the Day app
+----------------------
+Administrators wanting to display announcements has no other way to do so
+than to customize the login template. To avoid this a new app has been added
+that allows for the creation of messages to be shown at the user login
+screen. These messages can have an activation and an experiation date and
+time. These messages are useful for display company access policies,
+maintenance announcement, etc.
+
+Document signing
+----------------
+The biggest change for this release if the addition of document signing from
+within the UI. Enterprise users request this feature very often as in those
+environments cryptographic signatures are a basic requirement. Previously
+Mayan EDMS had the ability to automatically check if a document was signed and
+if signed, verify the validity of the signature. However, to sign documents
+user had to download the document, sign the document offline, and either
+re-upload the signed document as a new version or upload a detached
+signature for the existing document version. Aside from being now able to sign
+documents from the web user iterface, the way keys are handled has been
+rewritten from scratch to support distributed key storage. This means that
+a key uploaded in one computer by one user can be used transparently by
+other users in other computers to sign documents. The relevant access control
+updates were added to the new document signing system. Users wanting to sign a
+document need the singing permission for the document (or document type),
+for the private key they intend to use, and the passphrase (if the key has one).
+Finally documents are now checked just once for signatures and not every time
+they are accessed, this provides a very sizable speed improvement in document
+access and availability.
 
 Other changes
 =============
-- Upgrade requirements.
+- Upgrade Python requirements to recent versions.
 - Rename 'Content' search box to 'OCR'.
 - Silence all Django 1.8 model import warnings.
 - Add icons to the document face menu links.
@@ -94,5 +197,4 @@ Bugs fixed or issues closed
 * `GitLab issue #246 <https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms/issues/246>`_   Upgrade to Django version 1.8 as Django 1.7 is end-of-life.
 * `GitLab issue #255 <https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms/issues/255>`_   UnicodeDecodeError in apps/common/middleware/strip_spaces_widdleware.py.
 
-
 .. _PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mayan-edms/