Hi Joerg, all,
I'm jumping to the specs part of your mail, but put a +1 to your other comments
Joerg Barfurth wrote:
[...]
And couldn't the developers expect more responsiveness as well?
We go to the trouble to write specifications, which are announced on the [email protected] list. We write feature announcements to the feature announcement lists when the feature implementations are ready to be integrated. But I know of few, if any, cases where interested users have reviewed the specs and provided feedback in a development phase where it would still have been easy. Instead people wait until the entire development effort is through (that is also the time when documentation starts documenting the feature as specified and implemented) and then some. And then, well after the fact, the complaints start coming in and developers are supposed to turn everything that has matured for month over within a few weeks.
We do quite a lot to develop in the open and to allow feedback as early as possible. But often it doesn't come until it is too late. Or almost so.
We (FR project) have put a subproject in place with a dedicated list and dedicated people to follow the specs and comment them after 2.0 and especially for 3.0. This is not an easy task because written in a techie wording and in english, but they are very detailed and illustrated so I think we should be able to understand even with our poor skills :)
But as we found also that some changes didn't take care enough of previous users and their needs, we wanted to have a chance to give our feedback and help were we can instead of only complaining. Imho this is important because developpers can't imagine the complete range of use for a functionnality. Taking the example of the layer in Impress I report on this list some weeks ago, users described a usage the developper have never met. Speaking before he implemented it would have save time and energy to everybody. This is also here that we can help
At the moment, the difficulty we encounter is that the specs are not all targeted on the site but Christian Jansen told me that after 2.0 is out and its pressure a bit less, he will add the target to the projects. I found it sometime difficult to follow the changes i.e. versionning is visible only in the document. But a team will be able to read the list and follow more closely the changing.
I hope this project will help us to work more closely with developers :)
Kind regards Sophie
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.8.1 - Release Date: 23/03/2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
