Le 19/07/2018 à 15:28, mn a écrit :
What would be some middle ground here?
Of course the right attitude is somewhere in the middle. My message came
ou harsher than it should have.
I certainly do not want to impose my will on a dev, do not want to be a
member of a committee.
But a lot of features I'd like to see implemented or bugs fixed (even
readymade solutions I proposed) just do not materialize, certainly not
in a timeframe that gets me excited.
The problem I see is that, as a developer, I need some incentive to work
on a feature. If I look back on stuff that I implemented, the categories
are:
* a feature that I happen to need (extended literate programming
support, little annoyances I have when using LyX)
* something that interests me and that I presume to be generally
desirable (speed, better rendering...)
* something that nobody asks for but that needs to be done if we want to
go forward (unicode support for tex2lyx, large code cleanup to get rid
of accumulated cruft)
* something I began because I though it was easy but that proves to be
very complicated (math formulae display). After starting, it is too late
to stop :)
* small things that people requested and I know how to do while reading
the bug report.
In conclusion, it is a match between a need and someone able/willing to
provide a solution.
I do not think that we will be able to go very far from this equilibrium
point.
What is not in these categories for example is conversion to/from MS Word:
* I do not use Word if I can avoid to
* converters are pretty difficult and the result is often mediocre;
tex2lyx is already very difficult to get right, and LyX is supposed to
be close to LaTeX.
Therefore I do not see any compelling reason to embark in this endeavour.
There is just not enough *systematic* user feedback.
Error reports, user-ml private feedback are certainly not showing the
devs a complete and accurate or representative picture.
It is indeed in this "negociation" phase that we can make progress to
find good matches. Things are not easy though. There a lot of tickets on
trac that either point to issues or propose well designed features that
I do not have time to work on. Racoon, for example has written plenty of
these and I feel bad about neglecting most f them. I do have almost 10
years old bug reports taunting me in my mail box :)
As can be seen in the email exchange above: Devs have quite distinct
impressions and personal opinions on the situation.
Do we ? ;)
I think a compromise might involve a more quantified user feedback,
maybe for the ticket tracker?
Currently only the devs assign priority to a ticket. How about adding a
running counter on which users might then vote?
I see these voting things on some bug trackers but I am not sure that
they help. Having a feature highly voted on does not guarantee that it
is fixable or that somebody has the time/urging/capacity to implement
it. This can even create frustration from users.
As Pavel mentioned, there is the Features page that serves a similar
purpose. We should maybe move the ones that have been implemented
somewhere else, so that the green highlight does not catch the eye so much.
In any case I think Uwe's idea should be reconcilable with JMarc's
stance on that. I see a benefit for everyone involved if that could be
implemented. Devs still choose what to do next, what seems to them the
most taxing problem or the nicest thing to add, but with an awareness of
a more objective quality of what others think about that.
We definitely need to find ways forward. But the number of active
developers is not that big.
Of course, we will try to be supportive of users who want to try a toe
in the cold water of development !
Best regards,
JMarc
