Hi all,
nice to see a vital discussion around OOo code at Apache - so I want to
join and introduce myself. Let me first mention that I am here privately
and all statements/opinions in this environment will be just my own
(IANAL, but should be sufficient :-)).
I live in Hamburg, Germany, which is a nice place in summer time when
the weather is good. If we have the good known 'sub-optimal' weather,
there is always some time to spend on things You can do inside, e.g.
programming :-)
I am working on StarOffice/OpenOffice.org full time since I joined
StarDivision in July 1996. I started one year with StarMoney, but
quickly moved over to the graphics stuff which is my passion. I worked
on Impress for some years and became quickly responsible for the
DrawingLayer.
I did the first 3D engine (3rd generation of it now active), UI and
interaction stuff, dialogs, functional extensions and so on. I'm also
responsible for binfilter which removed the binary streaming from the
graphics core and allowed to make bigger changes to the cores at all.
(Maybe this is a good place to mention that my plan always was to do
binfilter as binary independent module with UNO API once and in only one
revision so that it could be added to any later office as binary; the
decision to add it to the repository and have to build it all the time
is form my POV a waste of time and space with nearly no advantages, but
even risks...)
Besides features/bugfixes I did a lot of cleanups, bigger and smaller
ones. Examples are the first transition step/refactoring of the
DrawingLayer to some more modern state (Primitives, see
http://blogs.oracle.com/GullFOSS/entry/finally_anti_aliasing_is_done)
which enabled AntiAliasing, better interactions (all with preview),
enhanced text cursors, flicker-free visualisations in all apps and
opened more possibilities for the future of the code/project.
I want to join since I'm in the middle for the next big refactoring for
DrawingLayer, the change of the core to double precision and
transformations. This includes model, view and controller changes,
adaptions of all DrawingLayer users (11 currently) and more common
cleanups, removals and simplifications. This is currently in CWS aw080
based on DEV300_m106 (most here will know what that means :-)). We are
talking about work in progress for a year already, a diff with 340.000
lines and over 3.300 files changed (see hg infos for the CWS yourself if
interested in details). It will take some more time to finish that, but
it would be too sad to lose the option for more speed, better precision
and easier handling for the graphic objects.
This is also the reason I want to demand that current CWSes *should* be
migrated to Apache, too, not only head to not lose man-years of effort.
I've seen (correct me if I'm wrong) that this is planned. It is also
clear that for something like those changes a CWS mechanism is
absolutely necessary. You want work like that to happen inside a branch,
with frequent merges from trunk.
Another thing which gives me some headache in this case: Those big
refactoring CWSes most often contain renames/moves/deletes of files, so
I would prefer a 100% bullet-proof way of retaining that information
inside the used CVS (e.g. subversion or git would do).
Enough said about that. I also like SF literature, playing games, my old
car, vacations in France, Florida or (if possible) Australia, red wine
and good food (who doesn't).
BTW: What will happen to the bug datatbase? Are there plans already or
do all tasks have to be found again...?
kind regards
Armin Le Grand
--
ALG
