[GeneralDiscussion] developer chat summary

Good morning.. Sascha and I just had one of our impromptu developer conferences on #zwiki.
We chatted for about an hour, brainstorming priorities and the best ways to go forward.

Here are some topics and decisions that came up:

- sm points to great motivating talks on software quality, collaboration, documentation: http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2007/index.php?page=podcasts/ , David Parnas and Fred Brooks

- sm really, really would like to have the best of both wiki pages and revision-controlled files, but needs to live with current darcs/wiki docs
  split for now. I think that means more sphinx (fs-based) docs,  especially developer/testing oriented docs

- brainstorming a future storage-agnostic static-html-generating easy-hosting componentised zwiki

- betabug just wants to smoke out a lot of bugs and have a proper unicode-savvy zwiki.
  sm agrees with that goal as next step - a good bug-free unicode zwiki, that does the things we're familiar with

- we agree on really easy filesystem-based skinning as a valuable thing to tackle after that

- sm is looking for ways we can simplify to focus our energy on new stuff

- stick with the plan of freezing utf branch after one more bugfix release, and focussing all energy on unicode branch

- are we sure the unicode retrofitting can become trustably robust for all users with reasonable effort ?
  We think so. To get there, we need a clear specification document, comprehensive testing, and more code review.
  We should be ready to change zwiki design if necessary to make this easier.

- no darcs 2 for osx ppc makes it hard for betabug to work on zwiki at the office

- efficient discussion and patch review/submission processes remain a top priority

And some definite actions:

- sm to keep streamlining patch submission process, eg finish mailin enhancement to deliver darcs patches without posting them on the wiki

- sm to release a bugfixed utf as 0.61 - this needs me to put out remaining fires with plone 3.x support

- betabug to focus on unicode testing

- sm to move my latest unicode notes to a sphinx doc, which we should develop into a specification to guide testing and cleanup

- sm and betabug to start doing joint code review sessions



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forwarded from http://zwiki.org/GeneralDiscussion#[email protected]