> Keith Whitwell wrote: > OK, maybe I'm getting carried away. > > But as I see it, there aren't many people in total on dri_devel+dri_users. > The only people who can really answer dri_users questions are on dri_devel > anyway. Why have two lists? > > There aren't a great number of dri_users questions anyway and a good > percentage of them probably should be on dri_devel as it stands now (they're > proper bugs, or whatever). > > So, I guess I still think the second list: > - doesn't serve it's intended audience well > - doesn't save us any time (except by making it easier to ignore users). > > But, I don't feel anywhere near as strongly about this as about the > sourceforge bug tracker. I can live with either outcome.
I started on dri-users. There was very little traffic. What traffic there was seemed to be questions that sometimes got answered. The FAQ was out of date, the web site was out of date, looking at the downloads for the project only served to confuse people... So, I lurked for a few months. After getting dri working on a few of my machines, and seeing that there was actual motion on the mach64 driver, I joined dri-devel to see what was happening. That helped a lot. I initally wanted to disagree with Keith that the lists should be merged, but it might solve the problem I had--that there is just too little information available to the dri-users and there is no indication that anything is happening. I was quite dissapoinited with dri-users for that. Since I sub'd to dri-devel, I see that there is a very active development community and three big projects in the works (radeon, radeon T&L, and mach64). There's no hint of this in the dri-users world. Since I own a Radeon QD and a Mach64 (Rage LT Pro), I was delighted to see the work that is going on and have already run some beta testing on the mach64. I guess what I'd like to say is that there is reason to have dri-users and dri-devel seperate as they have different uses. dri-users is more for startup and newbie questions. dri-devel is for developers to converse. And, yes, there should be a crowd of 'power users' spanning the bridge, but that takes time to develop. I'm starting to feel comfortable enough with the DRI to be able to help out over there and I only expect that to increase. The re-write of the web pages should help, as well. The recent discussion on what the data/call flow charts should look like--if captured on the web site--would be an invaluable resource to get more 'power users' bootstrapped. The problem with this subject is the same as it's always been in graphics--there are those who know a bunch and get *real work* done and the rest who are within one step (above or below) clueless. There isn't much middle ground. It took the better part of a decade for linux-kernel to build up that middle ground of power users. I wouldn't expect it to happen over night for DRI. So, I'd recommend that things keep on like they have been. Keep the lists as they are. Update the web site. Distribute some point release betas of code (not just nightly tar balls or CVS--those are almost useless to the would be power user). Announce the code releases. Having an almost un- documented web page with nightly tarballs or anon CVS access is pretty user- hostile. Now that T&L is merged, how about a point beta? Shake up the dri-users. Sounds like the Mach64 code hand grenade just got the pin put back in-- how about a point beta? Oh, and I have an nVidia Riva ZX that nVidia doesn't care to support. Anyone want it? Nice little 8M AGP card looking for a loving developer... ;) Cheers, David _______________________________________________________________ Sponsored by: ThinkGeek at http://www.ThinkGeek.com/ _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
