On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:14:52 +0200, Lauwenmark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Le Saturday 19 July 2008 21:57:35 Raphaël Quinet, vous avez écrit : > > using crossfire SVN, then again the same reasoning would have prevented > > jxclient from being included. Why include jxclient which had less > > features than the existing clients, especially when a lot of code was > > already written for the existing clients and they were actively > > maintained? Well, because some developers were interested in working > > on something different (in that case, a Java client). [...] > So no, the purpose was not to work on a "Java client" - the purpose was to > work on "a better client", regardless of the technology used behind it. Use > of > a specific language never was part of the initial design requirements.
I agree and I respect your choices. However, to put this in perspective for this discussion, you could have opted to improve the existing gtk2 client, considering that gtk2 works well on all platforms (including Windows and MacOS X) and the "more immersive experience" is mostly a matter of how you design the user interface. You could have decided to add a full-screen mode to the existing client, allowing more freedom in the placement of the various elements of the user interface (for comparison, GIMP is also based on gtk2 and supports a full-screen mode for editing). Yet you have decided to start something different. That's fine by me and I wasn't among those who argued against its inclusion in SVN. But please don't claim that importing gcrossedit into SVN is significantly different from what happened back then. > I also question the goals pursued by the new editor - so far, the only solid > one advanced seems to be: "get rid of Java". What makes me think so is that > all the possible UI advantages it comes from were obviously never discussed > with the Gridarta developers before this discussion (Ragnor may need to > correct me on this); if they were the real, most important reason for the > change, then I admit I'm quite surprized nobody ever asked for such important > features to be included in Gridarta. The dependency on a non-free version Java has been a problem for me. This is what encouraged me to look at gcrossedit more than a year ago. And then I discovered that it had several features that were better than gridarta (faster "painting" of maps, especially for the initial layout) and that allowed me to stop using the old X11 crossedit or using gridarta from machines running non-free software, and to switch to gcrossedit instead. So although my initial motivation was to look at something that did not depend on non-free software, it has shifted now to more technical motivations because I saw that some differences in design could improve the workflow. And regarding Java, there is a subtle difference between "get rid of Java" (I don't remember ever saying that) and "I prefer to work on something else" (which is my personal opinion). I should also add that I spend many of my days at work writing proprietary code using Java and Eclipse. But when I'm not working and when I'm wearing my free software hat, I prefer to stick to the ideals of free software and avoid anything non-free. And I am passionate about it, as you can see... > So does Gridarta, as Sun's JDK/JRE works fine with Debian stable. > As a side note, the JRE6 is available in the official etch backports, so > installing it is not really an issue; [...] This is not correct. JRE6 is not available in the main Debian repositories. It is only available in the non-free repositories (for Debian testing/unstable, or as a backport for etch). So installing Sun's JRE6 is still an issue for those who only use free software. [...] > At the risk of sounding rude (but I've a Registered Evil Lad(tm) reputation > to > defend), I really wonder why you asked if there was any objection, since you > obviously already made up your mind. If you plan to include it in the SVN > regardless of any counter-opinion given, then by all means do so, and stop > wasting time in what appears to be a purely rhetorical question by now. It wasn't a purely rhetorical question, although it may be now. There are several arguments that I would have accepted. For example, if Mark (as the official maintainer of crossfire) had said that he would have prefered to see gcrossedit living as a separate project, then I would have accepted that regardless of his reasons. If someone had said that creating a separate project on sourceforge would be better to encourage the usage of gcrossedit by more projects (e.g., daimonin) then I would have considered that as a useful objection. I might have argued that I prefer to focus only on crossfire, but still this would have been a useful comment. Also, if someone had said that there are already too many sub-projects in crossfire SVN and we should focus on removing some of them rather than adding new ones, then I would also have considered that as a valid reason for importing gcrossedit elsewhere. But so far, all the objections have been from developers involved with Gridarta and saying basically "don't work on a new editor". I do not consider these as valid arguments, because the editor exists and is mature (this is not something new) and because I am interested in working on it. As I said earlier, I wasn't asking if I should be allowed to work on it or not, but whether it should be part of crossfire SVN or if it would be better to create a new "crossfire editor" project on SourceForge or elsewhere. The few negative opinions received so far have been rather misdirected. But I also got some positive comments and some developers told me that they were interested in improving gcrossedit, so I think that it will be a useful addition to the crossfire SVN repository. But if that effort doesn't work and if gcrossedit becomes unmaintained a few years from now, then there is always the option of removing it from the repository. > (Yes, once more I sound overly negative and bashing - I guess somebody has to > play the role of the bad guy in every discussion :)) Well, that's fine for me. I prefer to have a honest discussion now about this, rather than facing initial silence and unspoken disagreements that blow up later and cause even more tension. That being said, please try to criticize without trolling. ;-) Several times you spoke of gcrossedit as a "new editor" as if that was something yet to be designed, while it has existed since several years. The only new thing is the import in SVN. Also, you referred twice to the GTK v2 client as a "Gnome2" client, which is obviouly incorrect because it does not depend on any GNOME code. And no, I will not be dragged into a KDE vs. GNOME troll, if that is what you were hoping for. :-) -Raphaël _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
