> Steve, how do you see future development of xforms panning out? At
> present it seems to be stagnating somewhat. That may seem churlish,
> given that you only released 1.0final over the weekend, but it isn't
> meant to be. I'm merely pointing out the reality of a release that
> occurred 6 months after you said something along the lines of
> "absolutely, definitely 1.0 will be released next Friday." I don't
> recall toooooo much new code going in in the interim.
I never intended to add much if any code to Version 1.0 -- the intent
was to get the build bugs ironed out and an Open Source version out in
the community.
I do apologize for the delays. Maintaining and developing XForms, of
course, is not my full time job -- as far as the University is
concerned, I'm Director of Graphics and Imaging for the National
Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research and during the past six
months to a year we've undergone some considerable changes and
expansions of our research program which have taken up a lot of my
time, I hope understandably.
On the one hand, I'm enthusiastic about returning something to the
Open Source/Free Software community which has in a large part made it
possible for me to be in the position I am professionally -- I owe an
awful lot to people like you, TC, Richard Stallman, and the myriad of
developers who've built the foundations of the community from which up
until now I've only taken from, while offering nothing of significance
in return.
On the other hand, I realize that doing a half-baked job isn't exactly
a contribution but may be a detriment.
It may be that I am not the right person for this job, inasmuch as my
professional responsibilities continue to evolve and my collaborative
projects continue to proliferate.
If it is the group's consensus that someone else should assume these
responsibilities and there is a nominee, I will bow to that consensus.
> I really think that you should roll out a cvs tree so that those interested
> in ironing out these bugs can live on the bleeding edge. Not that I envisage
> this edge being very sharp. Continual advancement rather than revolution.
I agree. I'll look into setting it up over the holidays.
> In many cases, I've mentioned many of them on this list before. I have often
> posted sample patches to this list that "cured" the problem to some extent.
> For sure, many of these patches were sub-optimal, but the resulting
> discussion has, in most cases, been nil. Zip. Nada.
>
> IMO, that's not the sign of a healthy development process, hence my
> desire to know your vision of the future.
I'm not sure I completely understand this criticism. A bug fix is a
bug fix. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's
generally obvious on the face of it. The bug fixes you've submitted
are either already incorporated or enqueued for 1.1.
I am chastened.
spl
