On 01/03/2013 06:20 PM, Matthias Luckhardt wrote:
Hi!
It's been a time since you read anything from me, anyway. And I didn't
have the time to follow the full thread or the list for some time.
>> I disagree on your approach. The developers should focus on the advancement
>> of the code and other volunteers should be sought out to flesh out the
>> documentation.
>
> Well, we could discuss this issue forever, and I tend to disagree on
> this matter: To me, proper documentation is just as important as
> bug-free code, and as a developer, I feel responsible for providing
> it.
I agree "in a way". In the past I tried to fill up Scids online docs as
far as possible and also tried the others to comment their code. You may
notice that some parts have better docs than others, I was just not able
to comment on functions I don't know to much about. Still, back then my
time allowed to even dig into the (to me) more obscure parts and try to
come up with docs for them.
IMHO the core functions of Scids current GA have a pretty decent level
of docs in what I would call "non-native speakers tries in the English
language".
> After all, if I wrote (most of) the software, who could be in a
> better position to describe its functions?
This is a point where I disagree: No as a developer I can NOT write the
best docs. Simply cause for me everything is pretty clear. Help is
needed from a users perspective to get it done for another user to be
comprehensible. If you check the list in the past (quite some time back)
you may notice that I always tried to encourage this. Unfortunately, the
participation was "limited".
> Asking for volunteers to
> step in will, in most cases, result in exactly what you're seeing with
> Scid, namely insufficient documentation, at least for smaller
> projects.
As for the GAs I always tried my best to document everything as best as
I could.
>> I recommend that you select the fork that is most active, start rolling your
>> sleeves up, and make a great program even better.
>
> Like I said, I would like the forks to join forces first and decide on
> a way forward.
Tried but unfortunately of no avail.
As for Stevens code I would always liked to include many of the
functions. But one problem is that Scid is quite a general tool.
Steve started out to support Chess960 back then and I really would have
included that ASAP (not that I am interested in C960 at all myself, but
users are). Unfortunately, he implemented almost everything except
castling rules. (I'm not sure if his code can handle this now.) This is,
(IMHO of course), a no-go for Scid and needs to be resolved FIRST before
it can be included. IMHO(!) I can not tell people that we do C960 and it
just refers to some shuffling of the pieces before starting out. I had
similar (usually small!) issues with most parts of the code of him I
checked out. Nothing that can't be cured- Then there was some
disagreement on (the IMHO completely irrelevant) type of GUI tools in
tk. Pascal converted this while ago to a new set of widgets that Steve
doesn't like. Well, I'd just vote for living with it and be done.
As I pointed out to Steve back then in quite a lengthy discussion I
think, I didn't even back then have the capacities to follow two code
lines, and there was some "history" why he didn't want to join in in the
first place in Scid. I would have imagined to port his stuff over time
into Scid. He has some quite good functions but as far as I was able to
see back then they didn't always check with all the surroundings: they
broke other parts of Scid or didn't work well with them and IMHO(!) this
would need to be sorted out first.
Fulvio did some great things but he seems to have to much on his desk
same for Jost. And so everyone left the project (mostly silently) and
sometimes with unfinshed stuff. Gerds search enhancements are quite good
in many areas but they break the filtering in some other parts and these
issues were never finished.
And here we hit one of the main problems: you don't need a developer
that does X you need a developer that does X in a way that it matches
with the rest. And one who FINISHES it to the end.
As I see it we had almost everything on Scid: quite some ego trips. that
were not helpful. Some huge commitments to do parts that were never
done. Developers that joined in and did quite a good job but were lost I
feel mainly cause their daytime jobs consumed to much resources.
Probably the main issue with chess players is that ther're just no/no
cooperative developers.
> If Steven is complaining about inactivity about some of
> the core developers, shouldn't these matters be resolved first?
Well, I admit that I'm guilty on my part as far as I really missjudged
my workload. Not @Scid but at the job I do for a living. I admit that
for at least the last two years I had absolutely no resources left to
develop software. As a hobby. And I did everything I did for Scid as a
hobby. I'm very sorry about this, but it's just not possible at all.
Probably my schedules get better this year but there are no resources
anyway. Too much "computer stuff" @work. I need to do other things @home.
> As an outsider to step in now and fix the issues previously addressed
> (both by me and what Steven wrote), I feel I would have to invest way
> too much time. Spending € 100,- on Hiarcs would be the much more
> sensible and saner option, I'm afraid.
No offense, but feel free. Scid does NOT need to sell anything to
anybody and it is not there to save money either ;) If you think the way
to go is commercial software it's up to you. If you think it's better to
do the world a favour by developing something, there is the possibility
as well.
> Sorry, but if Scid wants to attract more developers, the people most
> involved in the project need to step up and join forces first, and
> make the barrier to entry much, much lower.
The barrier was very low for quite some time and for a lot of that time
almost on my time budget alone. I can not do that anymore, I can not
invest time into Scid at the amount I did some time ago for the
foreseeable future. The job I have to do for a living is just to
demanding. Maybe I can start some smaller parts I wanted to do for quite
a while now, but I'm not sure of that either.
--
Kind regards, / War is Peace.
| Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength.
|
| Theory : G. Orwell, "1984"
/ In practice: USA, since 2001
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