implementing 1.8 features

[tigerw]

The only issues of higher priority that others would be those labelled 'important' in the issue tracker, and those presently consist solely of crash bugs. However, there's no requirement to work on them, or any, first (but its suggested to look at the 'easy' issues first to familiarise yourself with the code structure). Just fork and do whichever takes your fancy.

Welcome aboard!