Eric Nystrom wrote: > We humanists have particular expertise with > documentation - perhaps creating, revising, or tweaking the docs may be of > help. In short, please appreciate this community both for what it is and > what it is not; and if you are looking to contribute, there are many ways > of doing so.
ACK. Though it is not impossible even for humanists to a bit of coding, if desired. I am a humanist myself and I never saw (let alone wrote) a single line of code before I encountered that even if the developers are very open, I had to make my own hands dirty to get some of my desired features in. Remember that people are running this project in their spare time, and they are, understandably enough, particularly interested in features they need themselves (or they find interesting from a coder's point of view, to practice their coding). For instance: jurabib (since this is mentioned by the OP). I implemented that to Lyx 1.4 because I need it for my own work. I admit that the jurabib support still can be enhanced in many ways. But hey, it's a brand new feature, jurabib itself is very feature-rich, and I also have to get some real work done. Jurabib support *will* evolve, if people tell us what and why they need a given feature (and not: "I want *all* jurabib features pronto"). I encountered that the LyX code is (more and more) well documented and understandable. All I know about C++ is actually from staring at that code and from the patch reviewing of the developers (and I think there are other developers with similar experiences). In general, I think that LyX will only evolve for certain topics if people from that topic are willing to participate in one way or the other, simply because they best know their needs. I understand that writing a thesis comes first and doesn't give you too much time to invest at that particular moment. I also understand the frustration if an application doesn't seem to do what you actually (and urgently) need. But vice versa, you should also understand that developers might not get too motivated if a user simply argues "Why the hell does this [free] application not do what I want it to do? I need to save my time, so sit down, invest your spare time and do that for me!" Regards, Jürgen
