RE: [FR-devel] Introduction

[Curt Hibbs]

Bruce Williams wrote:
[snip]
> My strengths probably lie in technical writing, graphic design-- and, of
> course, programming.  I am fully open to any request for
> assistance in any
> facet of the FreeRIDE project.  I am currently reviewing the
> documentation
> and other resources located on the Wiki, but would be happy to
> assist you in
> any ongoing effort as I get up to speed.  No task is too small,
> no task too
> large-- as long as you don't mind answering a lot of questions ;)

First off, welcome -- I'm really glad you decided to join us!

A few suggestions come immediately to mind. Rich is in the process of
finishing off the last set of changes to the codebase for this release. Once
he gets that checked in we will need all of us to really *pound* on it. It
doesn't have to be completely bug free, but we want to make sure that we
don't have any bugs that would cause users to lose data.

Second, feel free to correct/clarify/expand the documentation. By this I
mean the user documentation at:

        http://www.rubyide.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UserDoc

and the developer documentation at:

        http://www.rubyide.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?DevDoc

(and the pages it links to). I am still writing the developer documentation,
but the user docs, while terse, are pretty much finished, so feel free to
make any changes in there.

Other parts of the wiki need to cleaned-up/reorganized/etc. but this is not
currently a priority, so I have not spent any time thinking about that.

> Thanks for the soapbox!
>
> ~ Bruce
>
> PS- I'm especially interested in Internationalization issues,
> most notably
> BiDi (due to the fact I'm fluent in Arabic).  I'm glad to see a
> page on the
> wiki for I18N issues; who's currently leading this effort?

Vruz (aka Horacio Lopez) is leading the i18n effort
(http://www.rubyide.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HoracioLopez).

This initial release is English only with no i18n support. However, i18n is
a *very* important goal of the FreeRIDE project.

Our i18n support will have to be divided into two parts: 1) That which can
be done without i18n support in the GUI toolkit (we currently use FOX, which
does not have i18n); and 2) that which requires i18n support in the GUI
toolkit.

#1 can get underway after we get this release out. #2 will have to wait
until either FOX has i18n, or when wxRuby is ready (we have three FreeRIDE
developers who are working, or planning to work, on wxRuby). wxRuby is the
Ruby bindings to wxWindows.

Curt