Thank you a.l.e. I can appreciate your restraint in how you phrased your response. I think your assessment of the typical end-user as being confused and, as GarryP demonstrates, a bit frustrated as well, over the lack of communication regarding 1.6 progress is pretty accurate. I am not aware of any of the internal challenges from a programming, logistical, or political perspective faced by the developers and I won't presume otherwise. If I were a programmer, I'd jump in and help out, but I'm just a hobbyist graphic designer who loves this program and would like to see it become better.
I've heard so much about how wonderful 1.6 will be, and how many great features the unstable 1.5.x versions have, but I don't feel confident leaving the stable branch. I can't afford to lose a bunch of work due to an unresolved bug in a version I was amply warned was unstable in the first place. To me it looks like so much has been hung on the promise of what 1.6 is supposed to deliver, meanwhile 1.5.x appears to be just an experimental test bed with no intention of making it stable prior to the release of 1.6. This method of not working towards a stable 1.5 version seems strange to me. In other projects there would be a stable version, with developers working on the immediate next version which is currently unstable and people can download it in all it's buggy glory if they want to, but why bother if you're not a programmer, as soon it is released as stable, and the developers move onto developing the next version. Each increment only introduces a manageable set of advances, thus the development of the project as a whole doesn't get bogged down.
Based purely on my external observations, it appears that when the goal of 1.6 was set back in 2011(?!), it was such a huge jump ahead of the 1.3 or 1.4 stable version being used at the time the developers ended up getting lost in a seemingly never-ending list of 1.5.x advancements on route to the desired goal of a stable 1.6, thus there was no impetus to make any version of 1.5 stable. Then as time went on, user demand for fixes and advances to the existing stable branch brought about new 1.4.x versions, while work was still progressing on 1.5.x on it's journey towards evolving into 1.6. If my perception of the situation is correct, then no wonder 1.6 has effectively stalled, and I genuinely sympathise with the situation the development team must find themselves in. I can't imagine how overwhelmed and frustrated they must feel. I wish I could help, but again, I'm no programmer. I'll cheer you guys on, and hope you work through this rough patch. Perhaps a reorganisation of version expectations and when to make something stable will help the project, or maybe another tactic will work better. Either way, I wish everyone the best of success and I will patiently await a post-2017 new release, whenever it will be.
As an end user, my focus will be to get the most out of the 1.4.x stable branch as I can. I'm going to ignore the 1.5.x unstable branch, regardless of how many advancements it has as it's been reported in other threads to have unpredictable bugs which sometimes destroy work. When either a stable 1.5.x or the long awaited 1.6 occurs I'll try that out, but in the meantime I'm going to be happy with what I've got. Thanks for the informative response.