On Sun, 5 Mar 2000, Amir Karger wrote:
> > I took a look at AbiWord's news page yesterday to see what the
> > competition are doing. Seems statistics are all the rage.
Statistics are also popular of the gnome news page and a few other
projects also.
> > Anyway, we trounce them on number of languages supported: 20 vs 15.
> > And nobody else does RTL that I'm aware of (living in my little
> > cocoon).
>
> Hold up! I'm not sure that we should be looking at them as competition.
Oh don't worry. I certainly don't think of them as competition -- not
even a word processor but that's another story.
> > News ideas:
> > + Personality Profiles
> > - like a mini interview or resume (wrt LyX) of a different
> > developer each fortnight -- starting with our illustrious leader Lars
> > (or maybe some comments from Matthias about why he started LyX).
> > Ideas? Each developers vision of where we're headed?
>
> Well, I'm worried that something like this might be a bit overambitious. Are
> you sure that (a) there are enough core developers that you'll be able to
> find one each fortnight? (b) Are you sure you (and they) will have time?
"I joined LyX at version x.xx.xx. It was buggy. I helped fix it. Then
it was less buggy so I added a cool feature: xxxxx. Then I added some
more and wrote some docs. I love LyX because ..."
Not too hard?
I'm still waiting for Lars or Jürgen to write a paragraph or three about
why Insets are cool and what they're doing to them. Don't worry about the
quality of the writing I clean it up a bit if needed.
> I would suggest instead that *sometimes* you have one of the news items
> (what do you call the items that aren't tiny but aren't features -
> editorials?) be an interview/bio. No reason to promise certain things will
> happen in every issue.
Sure.
> > + Statistics
[...]
> Why not have a FUDD (Fortnightly Useless
> Developer Datum) in each issue. Things I think would be interesting on a
> one-time rather than fortnightly basis are:
[ fun ideas compressed into this microdot =>.<= ]
I was thinking of giving a quick rundown of what docs we have and how good
they are ("Excellent!") when I mention Mike's modified Customization.lyx.
> Even more Useless:
> - length of average post to lyx-devel, who's the most prolific (most posts)
> poster? Who's the most verbose poster (no contest there :)?
You mean me? :P
That's gets tricky. I think we could have an award for the person who
replies to a really really long email and just adds: "Me too", or "I
agree" or "what version are you using?"
> > + Port info
> > - WinNT and Win98
> > - OS/2
> > - KDE/KLyX?
>
> Maybe the issue before or after the l10n/i18n issue could be about the "many
> flavors of LyX". You could also mention a bunch of unixes it's been on, and
> maybe even give some short hints on compiling issues, autoconf, etc.
>
> > + Aussie breakin?
>
> Why?
To prove how popular we are :P
Conspiracy theorists could speculate that it was an attack by a covert
operations group within the Evil Empire.
> > - Mathed
>
> Where's Alejandro, btw?
MIA?
> - An interesting question. How much duplication do you want to do of things
> that are in the docs? Better to point to where to find things in the docs?
That was the idea. Make people aware that these features/capabilities
exist (when was the last time you read the documentation that comes with
_anything_) and tell them where to find it.
> A "LyX tip of the (Bi)Week" might not be a bad idea, though. Of course, if
> we had FAQ it might not be necessary.
What's with this bi-weekly rubbish? Hasn't the US heard of fortnights?
You do realize that bi-weekly is a horrible mix of greek and german roots?
Which is why it sounds so confusing. Does it mean "twice-a-week" or
"every-second-week"?* This is a confusing issue for most people. Much
simpler to just expand their tiny brains and vocabularies by introducing
them to a word common in the "colonies" and dear old mother England:
fortnight.
* I know it means "every-second-week" but it is still confusing the first
time (if not more often) most people see this silly combination.
Allan. (ARRae)
