On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Richard Heck <rgh...@lyx.org> wrote:
> > Hi, also, from me, Josh, > > We have had some previous communication, but let me welcome you officially > to LyX's very first year of participation in GSoC. We're excited to be > doing this, and we hope very much that the experience will be a good one > for you and for LyX. > > As you know, the next three weeks or so are dedicated to "community > bonding". In practice, this is supposed to provide an opportunity for you > to become integrated into the development community here, so that you are > comfortable asking questions, etc, once you actually start coding. > > Interaction among LyX developers happens almost entirely on the lyx-devel > mailing list, and you should join the list immediately, if you have not > already done so. It would also be worth your subscribing to lyx-cvs, the > misnamed list that receives messages from git when commits are made. The > best way to get a sense for how things work around here is to watch how > things work around here. > > My memory is that you have already set up a functional development > environment. If not, please let us know, and we'll help get that working. > You should work off the master branch, which is what will shortly become > LyX 2.1.0. > > Are you familiar with git? If so, then great. If not, then have a look at > http://wiki.lyx.org/Devel/Git > http://wiki.lyx.org/Devel/LyXGit > which gives some basic guidance to how to use it. Julien and I, and others > on the list who know git much better than we do, can answer any questions > you may have. But the basic workflow is pretty well described on those > pages, and we will develop one as a group as we proceed. > > Somehow, somewhere, we will set up a git repo for this project, so that > you can share your work there. We are still deciding exactly how and where > to do this. > > It would be really useful if you could spend some time using LyX, to get a > sense for how it functions. The particular project in which you are engaged > has less to do with the GUI, of course, than with backend operations, but > the overall goal here is to make LyX a great platform for ePub, and having > some sense for how the pieces fit together will be helpful. LyX's > "semantic" model for writing is different from most other text processors, > though it will feel familiar if you have used LaTeX in the past. > > Julien and I have been thinking it would be useful if we post a general > message to lyx-users and lyx-devel, telling everyone this project is > underway and soliciting ideas for what needs to be done to make LyX a great > ePub platform. A page on the wiki might be useful, too. We have quite a few > ideas collected already, and Rob Oakes, who is mentoring another project, > has thought quite a bit about this. But there are many LyX users who will > have ideas, and it would be good to brainstorm a bit before we get started. > > You can find a list of existing XHTML export bugs on my page on the wiki: > http://www.lyx.org/trac/wiki/HomeRgh > The list is down toward the bottom. This will give you some sense for what > complaints people have had to this point. > > Otherwise, you should take a couple days to get set up, letting me and > Julien know how things are going. We can talk more, the three of us, once > you are set up, about how best to direct your energies in the near future. > You and I talked a bit a while ago about how the export facility works, but > it will be good to focus on that for a while at some point. > > One thing perhaps to think about, on the XHTML side, is how footnotes > should be handled. The way it is done now is kind of cool, but a bit too > cool, as it seems not to work on several platforms, and it definitely is > too fancy for ePub. More generally, you might want to try exporting the > User's Guide, or some other manual, to LyXHTML, and then looking it over in > a browser. This will give you a sense for what is working well and what > needs help. > > Hope that doesn't seem overwhelming! > > Congratulations, again, and welcome to the LyX community. > > Richard > > Hi, Welcome to LyX! I've not much more to add, as Richard has very well said everything. I would just suggest that you start out playing around with the code right now! As a LyX user, you'll know already some things that are not to your liking about the XHTML exports. If not, there is the list that Richard mentioned. It's always a good start to go for some small incremental fix. See for example http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/8022 or http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/8362 as a start. Very soon you will see that to achieve anything, you are required to get acquainted with many tools: git, make or cmake, grep, $EDITOR, etc. To set you up, checkout the LyX git repository and see if you can compile it first. Whenever you start working on a independent fix, create a git branch based off the master branch. Then grep for the relevant part of the code that seems relevant to a bug report, make the change, compile again, and cycle until you see a fix. Gather your changes into a commit or a series or commit. Soon, we will set up a repository access for you to push your changes to the server, where others will be able to see and pull them. But since git is distributed, there is no problem starting right now and committing your changes locally. There is definitely a lot of thoughts to put into electronic publishing. One first step towards epub support is maybe to finally add pandoc as a converter out-of-the-box. See ticket http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/6042. This requires a few lines of python code only, but mostly one should just play around with the tool to understand how one uses it on the command-line, what are the different command-line switches doing, how does the UserGuide look when you export it (again), and so on. Gathering the good and bad features of pandoc and other converters can help us in providing the best XHTML and epub support out there. Don't hesitate to ask questions, and we're looking forward to your contribution! Cheers, Julien
