On 26 Mrz., 16:37, Yuval Levy <[email protected]> wrote:
> On March 26, 2011 06:47:59 am kfj wrote:

> > I can't be bothered to
> > look at Windows now that I've finally made the move to Linux.
>
> Understand.  I recall you sounded quite differently when you first joined this
> group.  Keep in mind that not everybody is as progressive as you are, and even
> for those who are, the choice of platform is a personal one.  There is no
> absolute best platform, there is just the platform that works best for me and
> it may not necessarily be the one that works best for you.

I didn't mean to say Linux is 'the absolute best platform'. But you
know (and convinced me at the time) that stuff like packet management
was very helpful indeed. So made the move. I remember when in the
nineties I first started working on UNIX machines - it was liberating.
Back then it was all still pretty much command line stuff, and all of
the sudden I could actually work from the command line, instead of
having to wrestle with MSDOS batch files. Now the same thing happened
again, sort of - only that now Linux finally has arrived on my Laptop
without me having to do without half it's capabilities.

> > It might have been cleaner to go through with
> > the innovation in a coherent testbed, getting it to a good working
> > status and then porting it to the specific platforms, rather than
> > having to develop for all platforms at once.
>
> Isn't this how it is done?  I mean, when you develop a new feature, it first
> works on your platform, whatever that platform is.  Then you start sharing it
> with others who have slightly different platforms, e.g. different versions of
> Ubuntu; then different versions of Linux; and then different POSIX systems;
> and then completely "exotic" (from your perspective) systems, solving the
> issues that present themselves as you go along?

Hmmm... - suppose you're right. I just wish there had been more
success solving issues on 'exotic' systems...

> > Everyone can run Linux since it's free.
>
> Everyone can go jogging once a day for 30 minutes since it's free and it is
> proven to improve health and prolong life.  It does not mean that everyone
> feels like doing it.

30 minutes a day is just over 2% of your lifetime (and a larger
percentage of your waking time, which is probably worth more than the
sleep you get during the extended lifespan). So it'd better increase
your lifespan by more than 1.6 years ;-)

What I meant is that you could just lump together a suitable Linux
plus all the tools and libraries, make a VM from it and offer it for
download without having to pay anyone any licenses. The other systems
don't allow that. I'm not proposing everyone should migrate, but I
think VirtualBox is free for all systems, so it'd be easy to let
everyone have a VM like that and give them an easy start on coding for
hugin without having to worry about platform-specific issues. Just an
idea.

> My problem with a "reference platform" is that even "Linux" is a very broad
> concept.  As you are finding out, some Linux distros already switched to
> Python 3.0 while others are at 2.7 and some are even still at 2.6.  Which one
> would be your "reference platform"?  And wxWidgets?  There are some new things
> in 2.9.x that solve some of the UI issues we're all pestering about.

Point taken. Reference platform is probably the wrong concept.

> > I found it awkward trying to remotely diagnose difficulties
> > people had trying to get my code to run on systems I have no access
> > to.
>
> Here I think you are being too conscientious.  Sure it is awkward, but it is
> really not your problem.

It sort of is, though, because, really, I'm not so terribly interested
in the interface itself but I want to use it. If it never makes it to
mainstream status, all effort I put into using it is reduced to my
personal pleasure, where I'd much rather share it with the bunch.

> You are being very kind and trying to help them, but
> it is ultimately their problem and you can stop conceptually at the "reference
> platform".

I don't think an attitude of 'it's their problem' is helpful here. If
I've learned one thing during this involvement with the project, it's
that a 'me and them' attitude is wrong and doesn't work.

>We have three code maturity criteria [0].  Don't feel obliged to
> go all the way.  "Works for me" is good enough for a development branch and if
> other people will find it useful (and indeed there is strong indication that
> your python_scripting branch is very useful) they will take it on from there
> and help it build on the major supported platforms.  Your help will be
> appreciated, but nobody will expect you to do diagnose and solve difficulties
> on other platform.  Your contribution, as-is is an extremely welcome gift to
> the Hugin community.

I did look at the code maturity criteria. Of course I made my best
effort to satisfy a and c. And I had lots of help along the way -
thanks to everyone! But then I tried to instigate having b finished as
well, and it failed on the Mac OS front. So the code still technically
qualifies as immature. I have no choice but to leave it at that, and
at least I have hopes that this won't be a show-stopper. I've just
stood back and done other stuff for the last few weeks.

BTW, during those last few weeks, I've written a large piece of
software using the Python interface - it's about creating (lots of
very good and evenly distributed :-) control points from prealigned
images. It runs standalone and as a hugin plugin; I've announced it in

http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx/browse_thread/thread/a402da2fde3c0b8a#

but so far, noone seems to have noticed the thread. Is there anyone
out there who already has hsi/hpi up and running? Give it a spin and
tell me what you think! I wasn't sure whether I should add it to the
hugin_scripting branch, since it's quite large, so it's in my bazaar
repo for now.

Kay

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