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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Unified document viewer, lack of communication
From:       Wilfried Huss <Wilfried.Huss () gmx ! at>
Date:       2005-06-05 8:15:02
Message-ID: 200506051015.02698.Wilfried.Huss () gmx ! at
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Am Sunday 05 June 2005 03:02 schrieb Zack Rusin:
> On Saturday 04 June 2005 11:14, Stefan Kebekus wrote:
> > Since I have only limited time, I would very much like to support
> > others working on the problem of a unified viewer. I would like to
> > ask, however, what will become of my contributions to KDVI. I am
> > working on the project as a volunteer, and invest a substantial
> > amount of my rare spare time, I am naturally worried about
> > duplicating functionality in KDE. My motivation to work for the KDE
> > project would be near zero if I need to fear that one morning I will
> > have to learn that a student with more time than me re-did all the
> > programming I did the last months in his summer vacation, and that
> > all my efforts were worthless, just because someone didn't care
> > enough to write an e-mail to me explaining their intentions.
>
> It's really sad that you see competition as such a horrible thing. I
> can't believe it's coming from an Open Source developer as well but oh,
> well everyone is allowed to have their own opinion.

And it's really sad to see that you think communication is such a bad thing.

> > Assuming that you are no persons who like to frustrate others, or who
> > simply don't care, I suggest that we keep in touch, so that
> > duplicated programming efforts can be avoided. Do you agree to that?
> > Do you believe that we can find a modus vivendi where everyone can
> > contribute, or do you believe that people like me who have only
> > limited time should better not work for the KDE project?
> >
> > Can we agree on a transition process that will preserve the work that
> > I plan to do in the next few monthes (good printing support for DJVU,
> > bookmark support for KDVI (mostly done), some more) will not be lost?
> > Do you already have a well-documented API that one could use? How
> > much of the API that I have documented recently do you plan to use?
> >
> > Do you plan to keep that DCOP-interface of KDVI that is used, e.g. by
> > KILE? How do you plan to integrate forward/inverse search?
>
> You're asking whether things no one implemented will be implemented the
> way you want them implement? 

Without the features mentioned a DVI viewer is quite useless for anyone 
working with TeX/LaTeX. And a DVI viewer is more or less exclusively used
as a previewer for LaTeX.

The bounty description says the new viewer should have all the features
KPDF currently have. We would hope that also no vital features KDVI currently
has will be lost.

> That's a little silly. Personally I hope 
> people will take a completely different approach. In fact I'd hope that
> they will do something original. I think I expressed before that I
> don't think that using KParts for formats in a document viewer makes a
> lot of sense. 

That's fine. But you never said what would be a better approach. Just saying
this all sucks is of course easy.

> If you're so sure that your way of doing things is better 
> than you have nothing to worry about, now do you? On the other hand if
> you're so afraid that someone will implement something better to send
> emails like this maybe you should rethink some of your design decisions
> rather than making new people follow them. 

We just want to make sure that people are making an informed decision.
Piotr sad he had never heard of KViewShell before this. Now he looks at the
code and can decide if it is valuable for him or not. Isn't this better than 
starting from scratch without doeing a bit of research at first?

> That's of course my opinion and I would certainly hope that people who will
> be implementing this task will also form their own decisions rather than
> submitting to a pressure coming from anyone.

So you think my offer to Piotr to answer his questions about our Code is
a bad thing? I am really lost here.

Wilfried.
 
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