On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 01:18:19PM +0100, Asger K. Alstrup Nielsen wrote:
...
> I think I can answer some of it for you:
>
> Some developers are not mainly interested in bringing a modern
> application to the users. It's more fun to play around with a
> code, learn C++ some more, clean up the code, and have fun.
> They are not doing this because they need LyX to be better.
> LyX already solves all the problems the main developers have,
> with the exception of some problems that have been attacked
> mainly by Dekel.
>
> At this point, LyX development is less need-driven than ever.
>
> The developers also do not do the work because they want more
> respect of users. The existing users crowd is already enthuisiatic,
> and it does not matter whether there are 100,000 users or
> 1,000,000 users in this context. If anything, a larger user
> base only brings more anxiety, because then you have more
> responsibility to keep the application stable, and avoid mistakes.
...
> You have to convince the developers that it's more fun to have a user
> focus than a code focus.
As one who is actually more concerned with this user focus than with the
code, I still have to say that I can understand it. I can see that
writing excellent code is laying the basis for developing an excellent
application. That's why I very much support what is going on, even
though it may actually slow down things right now from the user point of
view. Myself I am a complete C++ weenie, but it's clearly the way to go.
With a piece of software as complex as LyX there is really a possibility
of "death by entropy" unless there is a strict focus on clean code. See
what happened with Netscape.
So: the one does not exclude the other. They are two sides of the same
coin.
> Also, you should probably acknowledge that LyX has come a long way in the
> last years. All you have to do is to take a look at the code, and
> remember that the yardstick is code quality, rather than user experience.
Hear, hear. But one leads to the other... but in an indirect, long-term
kind of way.
A short report on my own activities on the user side of things: I ended
up volunteering as maintainer of libwmf, and as "resident LaTeX expert"
for the wvware development. You know, the Word reading software. It's
pretty good now, producing rather messy but mostly good looking LaTeX
from a wide variety of Word documents.
The thought in the back of my mind with this has all the time been LyX.
One thing LyX needs for broader "semi-dummy" adoption would be a
half-decent Word importer. That should not be part of LyX, but an external
facility for obvious reasons. I believe Charles de Mira is working on a
native translator under wvware to the LyX format, but alternatively it can
be done using reLyX. I don't think LyX will ever aim for the same niche as
AbiWord for instance (and there's no reason why it should), but making a
wider user base happy is a good thing anyway ;-)
As an example, my wife is using a facility called wvMime to open the
Word attachments people send her. And gnumeric for .xls of course. She
has only a very vague idea what's going on, but takes it in her stride
that Word docs are converted to LaTeX in the background (in /tmp),
processed into .ps, and popping up in GhostView!
Another development is that I have been invited to join the Information
Technology Committee of AGU. I hope to be able to work on getting LaTeX
more accepted within the AGU community (it is already, but people
complain the lack of easy visual tools ;-), and especially to make the
AGU LaTeX classes as augmented by Patrick Daly the standard, so one can
use BibTeX etc. In order to make LyX support these classes, what is
needed is user definable floats: plate and planotable. Any progress
there?
Martin
--
Martin Vermeer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Helsinki University of Technology
Department of Surveying
P.O. Box 1200, FIN-02015 HUT, Finland
:wq
