Re: Cairo as common graphics context

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

Excuse me for the late reply, I was ill for couple of days.

Second excuse goes to my last email, as I did not stated it perhaps  
that you should take it with less weitht than it was written ... but  
that is common problem of all electronic communication.

On 17.3.2006, at 16:41, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:

> On 17 Mar 2006, at 00:21, Alex Perez wrote:
>
> > Fred Kiefer wrote:
> > > ...It looks like I am
> > > currently the only GNUstep developer working on back and the  
> > > interaction
> > > between back and gui and also specifically on the cairo backend.
> >
> > Were you not aware of this prior to this exchange of e-mails?
>
> Yes he was.  I can say that with confidence for two reasons ...
> 1. Everyone who tracks the developer mailing list and/or the  
> ChangeLogs is bound to be pretty much aware of what's going on.

I disagree. With so many inputs, so many interrupts, so many real- 
life work and other real-life activities, one can easily get lost...  
Adn a ChangeLog is just ... well ... a log. It is not a project  
management tool. And it shuold not be, nor it should be thing of as  
it was.

<snip>

> From the project management point of view, I don't think so ...  
> developers all (meaning anyone reading the mailing lists and  
> tracking ChangeLogs) have a good idea of what's going on (or not  
> going on).  It's true that newcomers and people who don't track  
> things need to ask in order to find out what's happening, but I'm  
> not convinced that that constitutes a problem.

Se above.  Even if you read each message on the list, I do not  
believe that you will have a large picture of the project, nor you  
learn current state of the whole project. If you (anyone can), then I  
will bend myself, come to him and ask him, whether he can teach me  
how to do that...

> It would be really good to have nice up to date summary on the  
> website/wiki for end users of course, but is it worth diverting the  
> effort of the few coders we have to maintaining that?  I think  
> not.  It's hard enough to write decent messages for ChangeLogs and  
> svn commits as most coders (I include myself here) are not great at  
> communications :-(

Why for the "end users" only? What about GNUstep dashboard updated,  
for example, monthly?

This was good for end users: http://web.archive.org/web/ 
19990218113209/www.gnustep.org/AboutGNUstep/ProgressOverview.html

Something similar can be for developers, but with better breakdown.  
AND with "assigned" developers (= the ones who know about the module  
the most).

> > Adam is not willing to ask anyone (either because there's nobody  
> > to ask or because he simply doesn't feel that he should have to  
> > delegate/ask anyone else to code anything) and so the problem will  
> > continue to the end of time unless something changes.
>
> Agreed, but I think much more the former than the latter.  We need  
> new coders for the core libraries desperately, and more people to  
> manage the organisation/communications (website/wiki/publicity).

Same problem again. "We need new coders". But new coders need to know:
- what is the state of the project
- what parts need help
- what kind of help is needed (very concrete om the form: feature/ 
functionality is not implemented and is crucial for this or that)
- what is needed for implementing the missing feature/functionality  
(this should be filled by anyone who knows the best the area) (*)
- ...

(*) and THIS is the reason WHY ANY input from core developers is more  
than crucial. Noone is expected to actualy code anything, but what is  
expected to make the project progress is that who knows how to do  
something, should give the knowledge to others.

I did not expected that anyone will immediately start coding  
anything, as Alex mentioned in his previous email in this thread. I  
was upset, because there was NO input from people responsible, nor an  
impulse from anyone to the responsible to give the input.

 This gave me the impression, that noone cares. And we want new  
developers?

Regards,

Stefan Urbanek
--
http://stefan.agentfarms.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,  
then you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi