On 07/16/2018 08:17 PM, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Am 10.07.2018 um 00:19 schrieb Uwe Stöhr: > >> As result I wrote this lengthy mail and hope you read it till the end >> where I make some proposals: > > Obviously nobody has any comments on my thoughts about LyX's future. > That is sad because I only got few private mails as replies stating > that indeed the missing fileformat conversion capabilities are a real > problem in real life. > >> So what can be done? In my opinion, we should >> - define the goal of LyX together with our users. Maybe the result is >> to hide background stuff, maybe it is the opposite. Whatever it might >> be, that should be the base for future development. >> - setup a "board of development" that take care of user feedback and >> who define the things the next version of LyX should have. Such a >> board should only be 50% consist of developers. Translators are not >> treated as developers. The idea is to see what people really need and >> to organize its development so that several developers develop a >> certain feature. > > I only made these 2 proposals and thought they are worth to be > considered. > It is OK not to agree, but what about other ideas or do you think we > should just continue as we did the last months? I mean criticism > should be constructive. So I would her your ideas for future development.
It's a perfectly fine idea to find out what users would like, though they do frequently tell us, via bug reports, emails, and the like. But as JMarc and Pavel have both pointed out, we are all doing this in our spare time. We work on what gives us pleasure and satisfaction, or what seems challenging and interesting, or whatever. Other projects that have boards---like the Document Foundation---also have *paid developers*. We do not, unless someone wants to crowdfund something, the way automatic spellcheck was done IIRC. Then they can put some conditions on what gets done and how. To take an example: Yes, lots of people would love it if there were a better LyX <--> ODT conversion, so they could work with people using other programs. This issue has been raised over and over again. But why should I spend my time working on something I'll never use? More importantly, I think it's more or less our collective judgement that this is a pipedream: You will *never* get a converter that is reliable enough for on-the-fly collaboration between people use LyX and people using LibreOffice. What you might get some day is a decent one-way conversion for journals that don't accept LaTeX. But even that is very hard. None of the existing tools is reliable. Here's some evidence. I have recently been involved with two book projects with a major academic press. Both are collections of papers; both had some people submit papers in LaTeX and some in DOCX. The press needed everything in one form and so decided to convert the LaTeX submissions to DOCX (which was the wrong choice). It was a *disaster*, so much so that some people were all but threatening to withdraw their submissions. It took over a month to get it sorted out. They deal with this kind of thing *all the time*. And even they can't get it right, just one way. Oh, and you forgot this part: > The idea is that playing in a big band is fun despite that e.g. you > cannot play your trombone when you like it but only in a way it fits > to the whole band. What do you call it when one player wants to do one thing and every single other player wants to do a different thing, and then rather than play "in a way that fits to the whole band" the first player takes their trombone and goes home? Riki
