Re: About sodipodi

Disclaimer: I am not a developer - at least, nothing more complex than
shell scripts (which is, amazing to me, my job).

Firstly, I love sodipodi; i've been using it heavily since, i think, .28,
on both linux and win32.

I am, in fact, starting to depend on it - using gimp only for initial
sketches, loading the png as an insensitive object in sodipodi and working
on top of it. I'm something of a convert to vector side.

On to your request for critique of style - I'm a huge proponent of release
early/often. I consider an ideal situation where the occassional official
release, as stable, exists, but with daily builds w/ cvs changelogs
visible available as well. The recognition that they'll be less stable (in
all likelihood) than the stable release would exist, but would allow for
quick hammering-on by the unwashed masses - leading to more bug reports,
etc.

I'm willing to compile from cvs, but frankly consider it a pain when a
binary is available - and if using a binary means being a few days/weeks
behind in featureset, i generally will live with that. Additionally, on
the win32 side, most would not have the tools needed to compile.

I guess i'm suggesting automated daily builds.

I'd love to PS this with a bunch of feature requests, but instead I'll
keep it to that.

Dan

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Lauris Kaplinski wrote:

> Hello everyone!
> 
> I am really gad there are still people who like
> sodipodi :) So let's stop complaining for now,
> and think positively for immediate future.
> 
> I admit, that I am lousy project manager. Ideas,
> how to make things better (management, I mean)
> are welcome. But let's be realistic - there have
> been countless number of proposals in style:
> 'let's integrate/cooperate with XYZ'. Every one
> of them has ended with friendly exchange of emails:
> 'let's cooperate', 'yes, let's cooperate'. And
> that's all. However good proposal ends in nothing,
> is it is not backed by immediate, interest and
> achievable in small specific steps.
> Things in code/features world are similar. We have
> absolutely no lack of good ideas - they are flowing
> in from doors and windows. Many of them are hard to
> implement and thus will take time naturally. But even
> with seemingly easy ones, keeping code coherency may
> make things hard and slow. Too often difficult
> compromise has to be find, that seldom is visible
> to outside (sorry, I forgot what i wanted to say
> with that).
> 
> Anyways, current unwritten guidelines are:
> - be conservative with patches, try to suppress code
>   enthropy by whatever means (this applies to code
>   maintainers, not contributors, as we cannot expect
>   contributors to be familar enough with the whole
>   source tree).
> - whenever possible be incremental, create new
>   feature as compile-time alternative and let things
>   settle before removing old code.
> - avoid vapourware. There are many interesting things
>   in sodipodi code, that can be made to work visibly in
>   few weeks, but making them to work properly (as the
>   integral parts of the whole) will take time
> - keep it fun. It is not about code, it is about
>   people, creativity, whatever. We may include things
>   only because it is fun, or because submitter was nice
>   person.
> 
> Hmmm... I see this is somewhat in conflict with 'Bazaar
> style development' and 'release early, release often'.
> Feel free to criticize.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Lauris Kaplinski
> 
> 
> 
> 
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