https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167313

--- Comment #5 from Telesto <[email protected]> ---
(In reply to b. from comment #4)
> hello @ Telesto,  
>   
> you are quite nicely describing a project that has become bogged down in mud
> and suffers from more will than skill ...  

* Bogged down sure. 
* More will than skill. No idea, the experienced developers appear pretty
skilled in my perception, but well I have no coding experience. So looks like
magic anyhow :-)

The number of active experienced developers - familiar with certain parts of
the code - shrinking is less helpful. Lots of legacy code (without much
documentation) doesn't help either. 

> There is another way, look at code by Dan Bernstein ( qmail ) or Miguel de
> Icaza ( midnight commander, gnumeric ) ...  
>   
> Or try to get access to Volker Birk's talk "Software Engineering".  

Probably :-). I'm not a big reader myself. And not too familiar with the
developer world. LibreOffice suite surely quite a big project with the various
applications. Gnumeric is way more focused


The 'can do' mentality doesn't help either. If you ask (pay) we realize scope
creep. So if some company XYZ wants to use LibreOffice for simple modifications
to PDF document, someone will implements a PDF import filter. The
implementation might have limitations and quirks, but it's good enough for XYZ.
Now people can open PDF's complains arrive regarding the limitations. Next step
is a discussion of becoming a full-fledged PDF-editor...

> More manpower mostly improves confusion, better quality is the way to go ...
There is an optimum, sure. However there are enough area's which could use
dedicated developer for quite some time. There are all sorts of independent
components and layers. Import filter/Export filter for various file formats.
VCL rendering; Accessibility. The various components
(Writer/Calc/Draw/Impress/Base/Math). Calc/Draw/Impress/Base/Math are getting
the bare minimum attention. 

The question is more who decides about what the developer should address (or
not). There is no general direction. There is no focus/prioritization. Only
more and less vocal people and people with little more power compared to others
(Board Members) 

TDF Budget might be spend on reviving Base (niche product, and unmaintained for
years), I read. Say this entails hiring a dedicated developer for 18 months; At
the end focus will shift again. Base developer gets fired or re-assigned,
because of other priorities (Hello Writer/Calc). So we gonna improve 'horrible
shape' to ideally good. And letting it decay again to mediocre or bad, I fear.
The old users of Base moved on; I guess. So we need to create the userbase for
Base again? And when new users do arrive it's probably 'unsupported' again;
hello bugs.. 

> once lost it's hard to recover ...  bin-FP calculations contribute a lot.
The quality issue where already present since the fork to LibreOffice, if you
ask me. 

"bin-FP calculations contribute a lot." 
To cryptical for me. I suppose you're referring to Calc and something with
floating points?

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