On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 05:29:20PM +0100, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
> >>>>> "Matthias" == Matthias Ettrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I've been reading this thread when it was nearly over, so all the
> technical points have been taken. Since I am not going to do that
> again, I'll restrict myself to the subjective part :)
Right. I'll keep my comment short, too. Um, shortish.
> Matthias> Believe me or not, I'm thinking in LyX' interest here, not
> Matthias> KDE's.
>
> Are you? You say that LyX should become a "killer application". What
> is a "killer application"? It is an application that makes the Coca
> Cola Company drop windows+office in favor of linux+lyx. Does LyX need
> to be a killer application? I do not know, we have to see whether the
> quality of the program will improve due to that. The world will not be
> a better place because Coca Cola is happy. I will not become richer
> either [which could have been a valid reason, of course :)]
>
> What I know is that TrollTech, KDE, Gnome, Redhat, Suse, Caldera and
> the others do need killer application. But that's not my problem,
> personally.
Well said!
I think any open source application has a constant tension between wanting
to write good code and wanting to write popular code. Now that I think of
it, I guess it happens for realy companies too; it's only more evident
during the open source development process, since the coders are more
closely connected to the users than you get with closed source stuff.
We're always getting emails asking for things, and getting people saying,
"If only you would add this feature, ten million people would be using LyX
by next week." But it sounds like in the long run, LyX will actually be
better if from time to time people focus on the unglamorous guts of the
code.
The truth is, if LyX becomes truly popular (1E6 rather than nE4 users, say)
there will be much more pressure to add eye candy, to have up to date
documentation (OK, that wouldn't be so bad) and other pressures. That
doesn't mean we should sabotage LyX to make sure it doesn't become popular,
but it's at least one force to push against the coder's natural wish to have
his code used by everyone in the world (aka World Domination).
So it seems like the best course is the current one; gradually developing
the code, but making sure it stays good code.
Actually, only one or maybe 1.5 of the old core devvies is working on GUII
-- so we're not actually losing much time by having them work on it. The
rest are continuing work on stuff that has to be done anyway.
> I do also have my own conception of what is good for our users, I I do
> try to force it into their throats: I try to force them to give a
> structure to their documents, think in terms of what they want to
> write instead of what it looks like; in short, use LaTeX instead of
> Word. I think this is a much worthier goal. And yes, this is a kind of
> political goal; I see LyX as a an educational trojan horse: make
> people learn how to write their documents when they are just trying to
> know what icon will give them bold for this damn section heading.
I definitely share this conviction. Which is interesting because (a) it
seems kind of mean, and (b) it seems like the opposite of the Perl
philosophy. I guess I'm not 100% Perl zealot after all.
Maybe a better way to put it is that people have the choice to use LyX or a
standard word processor. Anyone who chooses to use LyX is choosing to use
the more intelligent method of document writing. (Either that, or they were
previously forced to use LaTeX, so they don't have any choice either way.)
-Amir
