On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 03:10:25PM +0200, Asger Kunuk Alstrup Nielsen wrote: > The problem is that if the freeze is opened, there will be more > things that needs to be fixed.
Well, one of the points I was trying to make - or _the_ point - is the "infrastructure thingy": LyX's internal structure is broken in a few areas. Some bugs simply cannot be solved properly as long as the structure is not right. Some of these bugs can be worked around, though, but doing so is (a) non-trival, (b) likely to break other things and consequnetly eats a lot of time and energy. In the long we need proper internal structure anyway - at least that's my conviction. We can't go on much longer with the current mess [Just remember: We had been offered money to do a job that did not really sound hard but were not able to do. That should tell something...] So the question is not _whether_ to do it, but _when_. > Effectively, the pile of things > that nobody has time or willingness to work on increases. This would hold true if we revoked the freeze in order to get new fancy features in. I am not talking about features at all. I am talking about getting things straight. > The solution is to get people to work on the release, as far as possible. > There is no mechanism for forcing people to work on a given thing, but > there is no problem in asking people to do so. That should not > de-motivate, because we all agree that these things needs to be done. [I get demotivated already if I open my mailbox on Monday after three days off and see no message on cvslog....] > Yes, it might seem like a huge task to start with: Learning Qt, and then > doing GUI-work, which might not be your favourite programming task. But > you have to look at yourself and ask: Is it really that huge and > difficult a task, or am I being a little lazy? Could I not help the > community out by doing this? Well, I am lazy. But then there is this other little project of mine called 'thesis' and a LyX freeze definitely shifts priorities a bit. I guess I am not alone with that... > [...] > It's simple. We should make it attractive to work on this: > - Express our gratitude to the people that *do* work on this task - > Express our gratitude to people that demonstrate a willingness to try to > work on this, and motivate them to keep going - Help where we can with > technical questions in this area - Express that this project is a > high-prestige area. Working on this project gives you ultra-geek-credit > - Consider to ask for external help: We have a case where the most > anticipated LyX release with GUI independence is being held up by a lack > of skilled Qt developers. It should not be impossible to find some KDE > hackers that can implement the missing dialogs. In this case, we should > offer those hackers as much support as possible, and prominent credit in > the release notes. > > Only when it has been demonstrated that such steps did not work, should > we consider to adjust the release criteria for such a major thing as the > Qt-port. Ok. All of this sounds sensible. So who is starting to act on this? ;-} Andre' -- Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. (T. Jefferson)
