On Jun 19, 2013, at 11:36 AM, Scott Kostyshak <skost...@lyx.org> wrote:
> LyX users influence development by posting tickets on trac. A few > brave users participate in discussions on lyx-devel. I think there is > a clear way for LyX users who would like to get in touch with LyX > developers. I think the other way is less obvious. > > I often find myself thinking "I wonder what most users think about > this". I could send an email to the lyx-users list, but most of the > time I don't because i would only expect a couple to respond and that > wouldn't really give me an idea of what most users think. > > I propose the following: an annual survey of LyX users. I think this is a great idea. Having thought about it for all of five seconds now, would it make sense to solicit the users' list before each survey to get ideas for the survey, then follow up with some benevolent editing to create the actual survey? Jerry > What I am most > interested in asking users is "do they prefer X or Y?". For example, I > proposed a recent patch that really comes down to a preference. A > couple of developers confirmed this, and I just planned on forgetting > about it. But then I realized that just because a patch includes a > personal preference doesn't necessarily mean it should be rejected. > Developers could vote on it, but it would also be nice to get input > from users. > > This could be qualitative, such as "here are a list of enhancements > that are being debated for inclusion in LyX 2.2. What are your > thoughts?" or we could make it quantitative "if you have sent more > than N emails to lyx-users or lyx-devel in the past year, you can > vote". And perhaps 2/3 majority would be required for an enhancement > to go through. A couple of examples where I would be interested in > knowing the answer are > > (A1) continuous spell-check by default. > (A2) behavior of LFUN_DOWN_SELECT on last line. > > The survey could include other types of questions, but it would be > nice to keep the survey as brief as possible. Another question that > would be useful (e.g. for deciding what the minimum version of > packages our layouts and templates should support) is: > > (B1) what TeX distribution do you use (please provide the year, e.g. > TeX Live 2009) and how often do you update to the newest packages? > > Any thoughts? > > Scott
