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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Suggestion Box?  ATTN: Dre
From:       James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj () acm ! org>
Date:       2003-05-15 20:02:09
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I would really like to contribute to the KDE project.

I am a IT professional currently on disability.  I currently don't 
know C++ although I can write programs in C although I must admit that 
I don't completely understand C programing (some of it I don't even 
want to understand).  For reasons that I'm not going into except to 
say that I have CFS/FM, I do not feel that I am currently able to 
write code.  However, I do know programing and would like to help.

I suspect that many of you may not understand what I am talking about 
since it is a common misconception that writing code is equivalent to 
programing -- that if you have learned a computer language that you 
have learned programing.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Despite the fact that I do not write code, I could still help with 
programing.  Why would I be any help?  Because programs need to be 
designed before they are coded.  It is the hacker mentality to 
immediately start coding.  I have seen several projects on:

	http://apps.kde.com

that were well coded but were not designed first and therefore didn't 
work.

I had started going through the huge backlog of bugs.  But, I haven't 
done much of this lately because of poor health.  I was going to start 
on it again but couldn't help thinking that the 'arogrant developer's 
that quickly closed some of the bugs that I submitted might also like 
to dig through the huge backlog of bugs (some over a year old). 
Perhaps LIFO is more 'fun' than FIFO.  Or, perhaps they just like 
being disrespectful.  I say disrespectful because I think (perhaps 
wrongly) that a mature IT professional should get some respect from 
self taught hackers half his age.

But, to my question: Where is the suggestion box?  And. no I don't 
mean submitting a 'feature request' bugs.  Somewhere KDE needs to be 
designed and suggestions need to be discussed.  I realize that this is 
contrary to what I see.  What I see seems antithetical to Open Source 
-- a rather closed and insular world where those in that world know 
that they are right about everything and do not want any input from 
the outside; certainly not from users.

If you doubt this, please see some of my recent postings.

1.	[PATCH] kdebase for 'startkde'

I guess nobody understands that a big chunk of the: 'startkde' script 
that supposedly deals with fonts doesn't work correctly and is 
incompatible with FontConfig.

2.	MIME types: inode

Lauri Watts was nice.  But, only suggested that I do something other 
than what I wanted to do.

3.	Icon priority: hicolor vs. ???????

I am unable to really understand kde@arnoldarts.de's remarks:

> Icons in the standard-theme have precedence and the standard-theme is 
> crystalsvg.

but I get the impression that he understands this a LOT less than I 
do.  Or perhaps he was just being rude.

It all three cases, I posted a follow up which was not answered.

So, my question is, is this (kde-devel) the correct place for such 
suggestions?  If not, does it exist?  Where? And, if not, would KDE 
consider creating such a list?

I also wonder if it was that nobody actually understood what I was 
talking about or do the members of the list just want for me to go 
away and leave those 'inside' to themselves.

As I said, I would really like to help with the project and I feel 
that I could contribute a lot.

--
JRT




 
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