Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com wrote: The wiki is utterly useless and broken!! If you don't know the directly link to what you are looking for, chances are you will never find it. lol! Only if you don't know how to use Google. It flawlessly finds everything I need by searching for lazarus wiki searchterm. -- Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
Op 1 maart 2012 08:12 heeft Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com het volgende geschreven: On 1 March 2012 02:22, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: The results are very strange. Entering documentation finds almost all pages, because these have this keyword in the headline and navigation menu. It even finds result pages where the entered word doesn't appear _anywhere_ in the wiki page. Not the header, not the navigation, not the body. See my example about freebsd and the tiOPF result page. The wiki is utterly useless and broken!! If you don't know the directly link to what you are looking for, chances are you will never find it. I guess you mean: I cannot use the wiki. Or: the index page doesn't work like a search page. Or: the textbox on the index page doesn't work like I expect. In that case, you should not use the wiki, but it is not broken. If you type in freebsd, it shows a page with all pages whose name start with freebsd or are later in the alphabetically, case sensitive sorted index of pages. It doesn't say anything about the contents of the page, just about its name. Vincent -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Somebody broke File Filters dialog in Lazarus Trunk
On Thu, 1 Mar 2012 08:42:34 +0200 Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I got a Lazarus Trunk update yesterday, and this morning noticed that my File Filters (masks), as defined in Tools - Options - File Filters are not being loaded displayed correctly. I have 12 filters defined (see attached file), but only the last two filters are loaded and used in dialogs. Anybody got a clue as to what happened? It was implemented without the filling 0 in filter tags. In other words: replace Filter01 with Filter1. Mattias -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On 02/29/2012 06:17 PM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: I'm not familiar with CHM, don't know how this could be achieved. But I assume that such a feature should be available already - who knows more? That is why I mainly concentrated on DocView and culpably ignored CHM help. -Michael -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 01:45:02AM +0200, Juha Manninen wrote: Usually they are driven by a foundation and/or core team. Much like FPC nowadays, with occasional alliances with commercial parties that sponsor a certain development. There are not many alternative routes. I was hoping something more concrete and detailed, like ideas for helping new potential contributors to get a softer landing. That was the original idea of this thread. Rich Saunders proposed SMEs, people to intermediate between core developers and users. It may be a good idea, I only wonder how would it be organized in practical day-to-day life. Very easy. People do things. Not people try to force other people to do things, or try to extort other people to do things (if you do this, I might help out, or many other people will come). Don't blame the tools, don't blame core, don't blame the weather, just start. That is also what is wrong in these threads. All these threads about what is wrong with the docs have combined hundred times more lines then were contributed externally (by non core committers) to the docs. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Wiki Search vs Index
On 03/01/2012 08:05 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: What's the point of having a search or index when it always spits out garbage! This is why I vote for decent offline help for all aspects of Lazarus, IDE, Language, LCL, RTL, ... I was happy to get to know that Mathias and you are working on a tool to export the Wiki content to offline help viewer file format, so that a (multiple file) offline viewer should be enabled to search the complete available documentation and find the requested information in any of the chapters. -Michael -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Somebody broke File Filters dialog in Lazarus Trunk
On 1 March 2012 10:41, Mattias Gaertner wrote: In other words: replace Filter01 with Filter1. Thanks, it's working again. -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
On 02/29/2012 05:54 PM, Marc Santhoff wrote: Reading about this type of confusion - count me in - I need to ask: Where is the process of building up help files documented? In fact (after the work in progress has stabilized), the documentation should be quite short. Hopefully, finally, there should be a script to be called (with a limited count of parameters) that in one call creates all files for a selected help viewer (DocView, CHM, HTML, PDF, ... ???) for all chapters (like IDE, Language, RTL, LCL, ...) from the available sources (Sourcefiles, FPDoc XML, Wiki). Just dreaming ? -Michael -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On Thu, 1 Mar 2012, Michael Schnell wrote: On 03/01/2012 09:45 AM, Marco van de Voort wrote: Don't blame the tools, don't blame core, don't blame the weather, just start. Sorry, I tried to keep my moth shut, but I can't. If we want contributors who help enhancing the documentation, we are addressing quite normal users that should be able to do this using !easy to use tools, but who are not able to create those tools. (With no request to anybody to do any additional work) it is obvious that one step is necessary before the other one. The angle is of course in the 'easy to use'. You can hide behind that excuse forever. That's what Marco meant with Don't blame the tools. So yes, with your statement, you do blame the tools. Well, please don't. Just document. We'll fix any errors you make (if any), don't worry. Michael. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
On 1 March 2012 10:09, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote: lol! Only if you don't know how to use Google. It flawlessly finds everything I need by searching for lazarus wiki searchterm. Totally defeats the point of the Search and Index features on the wiki then, doesn't it? In that case, could we ask the wiki maintainers to please disable the wiki Search and Index functions, and rather embed a Google Search in it's place. -- Regards, - Graeme - ___ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://fpgui.sourceforge.net -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Update twiki
On 1-3-2012 7:51, Kaj Mikkelsen wrote: Hi I wrote a little tutorial about creating pie chart with the TAChart components. I was encouraged to upload it to the wiki. Could I please get some directions for how and where? Look in the wiki itself, I think there's a help link on the right in the list of links there... You'll have to register an account there and log in first (protection against spammers) Could just do it, but I want to comply with written and unwritten policies. I'd say just do it ;) IIRC, there's some rules you have to abide by listed when you submit the new content, but it's common to lots of wikis (i.e. don't submit others' copyrighted content, don't complain if others edit your page, and there's the license you release your work under). You could send the link to the wiki page after you're done if you want feedback on it... In general that's probably not necessary as anybody can click the Recent changes link on the right of the wiki and see what got changed recently ;) Good luck, Reinier -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
[Lazarus] Contribute to a book instead of wiki?
Hi list, Noticed some people said they don't want to contribute to the Lazarus wiki for various reasons. If those people want to contribute their knowledge and help others with it, there are alternatives, such as the Object Pascal/Lazarus book by forum member motaz (Motaz Abdel Azeem): http://code.sd/startprog/ (released under Creative Commons license) IIRC, there was also a French book that discusses Lazarus. Regards, Reinier -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com wrote: In that case, could we ask the wiki maintainers to please disable the wiki Search and Index functions, and rather embed a Google Search in it's place. Yes, that would be a great solution. Unfortunately I don't have access to the wiki server, and I am not sure who has. -- Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 10:30:00AM +0100, Michael Schnell wrote: Don't blame the tools, don't blame core, don't blame the weather, just start. Sorry, I tried to keep my moth shut, but I can't. If we want contributors who help enhancing the documentation, we are addressing quite normal users that should be able to do this using !easy to use tools, but who are not able to create those tools. I don't agree. I think it is perfectly possible to do it now. Yes it could be better, but I think it is perfectly possible now. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Update twiki
2012/3/1 Kaj Mikkelsen l...@vgdata.dk: Will it be OK to put a link to the page in a mail, or is that considered bad? Please do, so I shall see it. I do not monitor wiki actively enough to notice your contribution in the recent changes. I will perform some copyediting, and then link to your tutorial from the TAChart and TAChart_documentation pages. -- Alexander S. Klenin -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] String grids
Yes, I am discovering this. For example, how to change the background colour of only a portion of a cell. That turned out to be very easy. Thanks, Dave. -Original Message- From: Alexsander Rosa alexsander.r...@gmail.com Reply-to: Lazarus mailing list lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org To: Lazarus mailing list lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org Subject: Re: [Lazarus] String grids Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:37:31 -0300 There's a lot more you can do with String Grids http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Grids_Reference_Page 2012/2/29 David Copeland david.copel...@jsidata.ca Thanks! /Dave. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Wiki Search vs Index
Am Donnerstag, den 01.03.2012, 09:05 +0200 schrieb Graeme Geldenhuys: 2012/3/1 John Repucci : Ah - silly me. All this time I have been using Wiki Search. Search for virtual Index returned: 11 Wiki Search returned: 186 As usual, the wiki returns rubbish, 100% of the time! No it doesn't, at least for me. eg: Go to the Index page, type in freebsd (without the quotes). Make sure Main is select in the ComboBox, and click Go. As someone else said somewhere: The index page lists page titles, page titles are equal to the pages names. What's the point of having a search or index when it always spits out garbage! I typed Freebsd into the wiki search input box and it returned two 100% hits and, as you're asking for IIUC, it searches the pages text and returns hits from that search. Look: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Special:Search?search=freebsdgo=Go I van't see what's wrong with that. I agree, I did expect to see the page FreeBSD in the index list. But there is a trick regarding case sensitivity. If you type in Free* instead of Freebsd - note, many if not all user of free BSD write it's name FreeBSD, not freebsd - you get what you are searching for. Same holds true for tiopf, that can be named TiOPF, tiopf, tiOPF as main cases. Conclusion: - Index search work fine. - Remember the index is case sensitive and use it smart. - Maybe the search logic could be changed. If one knows it's working OK, but since it is unusual I have stepped into this pit multiple times myself. - Beofre changing the wiki it's easier to use google or another good public search engine similarly capable. There cpould be a link on the wikis main page for doing so. (This took me 10 minutes to find out myself ;) -- Marc Santhoff m.santh...@web.de -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Rich Saunders schrieb: On 2/29/12 7:35 PM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Juha Manninen schrieb: So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be managed differently from how it is managed now? IMO it's not so much a matter of management, but of mind shift. The developers should share more of their knowledge, apart from only writing code. Until then every management attempt will be ineffective. BTW this is not a criticism on Lazarus only, I found that attitude in many open source projects, and small (one-man) companies. Failure to educate co-workers is usually justified by a lack of time (busy with more important things), and results in never decreasing work load. While you have identified one issue that may not be helped by a change in project management, there are other issues that will be helped. So don't just focus on this one thing and say every management attempt will be ineffective. I wonder what's the intented purpose of your management. In my understanding a management will give instructions, which then are *obeyed*. Everything else is talk about a project, which can happen in any place (mailing list, forums...). DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Martin schrieb: On 01/03/2012 00:35, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Juha Manninen schrieb: So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be managed differently from how it is managed now? IMO it's not so much a matter of management, but of mind shift. The developers should share more of their knowledge, apart from only writing code. Until then every management attempt will be ineffective. BTW this is not a criticism on Lazarus only, I found that attitude in many open source projects, and small (one-man) companies. Failure to educate co-workers is usually justified by a lack of time (busy with more important things), and results in never decreasing work load. Well but it is a question of philosophy then, isn't it? In either case the answer has very *practical* consequences. provide what is required (answer questions) versus provide all (or some/lots) upfront You assume that all questions *have* to be asked. But with insufficient upfront information it can require many questions (and answers), until the discussion reaches the *essential* points. It does still cost time to write up all the info, and guarantees nothing. While if someone wants to do work on something, there are much better chances that the work (providing infos/answers) will bear fruits. This finally explains the often confuse and inconsistent implementations, found across the entire LCL :-( And should the person who could answer become unavailable, then yes indeed documentation would help (until outdated, as the sack of a maintainer would lead to this) Just to prevent such an unwanted situation, the initial documentation should accompany the implementation, or follow it immediately. Consider the way how patches have to be acknowledged first, before they become part of the code base. The same principle could be applied to all *new* work on the code base, except bug fixes. In my experience it's helpful *also* to the implementors, when they have to write a few lines about the purpose or intended used of their work. What cannot be explained in a few words is almost a bad or inconsistent implementation, that better should be changed before committing. DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Martin Schreiber schrieb: I experience the same from time to time in MSEide+MSEgui project. People complain missing documentation and write if there were good documentation tools (which actually means if I would make them) they and other users would write documentation. Tools are not a replacement for content :-( Don't believe such statements, it is not true. The mentioned Lufdoc from Lars is such a good tool for user contributed source documentation, it exists since a long time. AFAIK there is not a single Lufdoc contribution from MSEde+MSEgui users other than Lars. Searching the *web* returns only a few Lufdoc pages, with almost no content. This indidicates to me that the tool has never been used for any purpose, except demonstrating that it is there. MakeSkel can be used for that job as well. The only thing what would happen if you or me would build the perfect documentation tool is that they would use that tools in their projects... People who are willing to work on documentation are able to work with existing possibilities or improve the tools oneself. ACK But as mentioned above, what result can be expected when writing documentation is considered the task of *unrelated* people, which have nothing but undocumented source code as a starting point? You (and others) seem to believe that there exist people, which are both able to understand the undocumented code of others, *and* are able to document it in a reasonable way, *and* find it more fun to write documentation for others (and for free!), instead of writing their own code. A very realistic assumption, indeed :-( DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Michael Schnell schrieb: On 03/01/2012 09:45 AM, Marco van de Voort wrote: Don't blame the tools, don't blame core, don't blame the weather, just start. Sorry, I tried to keep my moth shut, but I can't. If we want contributors who help enhancing the documentation, we are addressing quite normal users that should be able to do this using !easy to use tools, but who are not able to create those tools. (With no request to anybody to do any additional work) it is obvious that one step is necessary before the other one. Please tell us *which* documentation tools you tried already, and *why* you found them unusable. DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Contribute to a book instead of wiki?
On 1-3-2012 12:05, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Reinier Olislagers schrieb: Hi list, Noticed some people said they don't want to contribute to the Lazarus wiki for various reasons. If those people want to contribute their knowledge and help others with it, there are alternatives, Essentially the same problem: where to search for existing documentation? I don't really see your problem. What do you mean with existing documentation? Link/refer from the book to the wiki and vice versa. Also - haven't checked - the licenses of book wiki may very well be compatible, so it would be possible to copy over stuff literally (instead of rephrasing it). Regards, Reinier -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
Op 1 maart 2012 14:28 heeft Hans-Peter Diettrich drdiettri...@aol.com het volgende geschreven: Vincent Snijders schrieb: Op 1 maart 2012 08:12 heeft Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com het volgende geschreven: On 1 March 2012 02:22, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: The results are very strange. Entering documentation finds almost all pages, because these have this keyword in the headline and navigation menu. It even finds result pages where the entered word doesn't appear _anywhere_ in the wiki page. Not the header, not the navigation, not the body. See my example about freebsd and the tiOPF result page. The wiki is utterly useless and broken!! If you don't know the directly link to what you are looking for, chances are you will never find it. I guess you mean: I cannot use the wiki. Or: the index page doesn't work like a search page. Or: the textbox on the index page doesn't work like I expect. In that case, you should not use the wiki, but it is not broken. Either case indicates the lack of a description, required to use an existing feature. This is one more example of the different viewpoints of implementors and users. When an implementor *believes* that no documentation is required, he may be the only one who ever uses his great invention. Lack of reading the label, or lack of understanding what means Display pages starting at: Remember: this is the *index* page. The text part asks you what part of the index to show. If you type in freebsd, it shows a page with all pages whose name start with freebsd No such pages exist, all names start with a capital letter. False: e.g. http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/fcl-base or are later in the alphabetically, case sensitive sorted index of pages. What is are later? All pages starting with 'g'..'z'? Yes, but not A .. Z and a .. e. It doesn't say anything about the contents of the page, just about its name. This finally makes some sense. Glad you understood. Vincent -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
Am Donnerstag, den 01.03.2012, 14:28 +0100 schrieb Hans-Peter Diettrich: Vincent Snijders schrieb: Op 1 maart 2012 08:12 heeft Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com het volgende geschreven: On 1 March 2012 02:22, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: The results are very strange. Entering documentation finds almost all pages, because these have this keyword in the headline and navigation menu. It even finds result pages where the entered word doesn't appear _anywhere_ in the wiki page. Not the header, not the navigation, not the body. See my example about freebsd and the tiOPF result page. The wiki is utterly useless and broken!! If you don't know the directly link to what you are looking for, chances are you will never find it. I guess you mean: I cannot use the wiki. Or: the index page doesn't work like a search page. Or: the textbox on the index page doesn't work like I expect. In that case, you should not use the wiki, but it is not broken. Either case indicates the lack of a description, required to use an existing feature. That's true. The easy solution would be to write some short rules above or below the search field, about how the index search works. I'd like to see a reminder, tending to forget this works a bit different... -- Marc Santhoff m.santh...@web.de -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
Am Donnerstag, den 01.03.2012, 14:15 +0100 schrieb Hans-Peter Diettrich: Marc Santhoff schrieb: Am Donnerstag, den 01.03.2012, 01:22 +0100 schrieb Hans-Peter Diettrich: Marc Santhoff schrieb: A complete index, yes. To the right on http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/ under the headline Navigation there is a link to it. The results are very strange. Entering documentation finds almost all pages, because these have this keyword in the headline and navigation menu. Tried Documentation with a capital at the start? Ah, now the results are significantly better. But why? Does a capital character have a special meaning in a search? No, but wiki names are CamelCase. That thingy is case sensitive ... Somewhat, yes, but the proper formulation of search requests is unclear to me. It looks to me as if *all* pages are listed, when a search cannot find any exact match? I don't know, only played around a bit. If this is a standard MediaWiki search engine, the docs of MediaWiki would help. @WikiMaster: Is it MediaWiki's search engine? If not, which one? -- Marc Santhoff m.santh...@web.de -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Contribute to a book instead of wiki?
Reinier Olislagers schrieb: Essentially the same problem: where to search for existing documentation? I don't really see your problem. What do you mean with existing documentation? Link/refer from the book to the wiki and vice versa. Okay, so far, but how many documentation sources will be linked, and how to determine which of these links to follow? Scattering information into many places is not a good idea, when it comes to searching for specific topics. DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Contribute to a book instead of wiki?
On 1-3-2012 16:54, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Reinier Olislagers schrieb: Essentially the same problem: where to search for existing documentation? I don't really see your problem. What do you mean with existing documentation? Link/refer from the book to the wiki and vice versa. Okay, so far, but how many documentation sources will be linked, and how to determine which of these links to follow? Scattering information into many places is not a good idea, when it comes to searching for specific topics. Well, I don't know but saying there's more information to be found at http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal would be sufficient... but it's not up to me. And I DON'T mean to suggest you should write part of a book with links to the wiki all over the place. Otherwise, why write a book ;) You complained the wiki is a poor format to store help in, so I just wanted to show you an alternative: put your information in a book. That's all. Regards, Reinier -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
2012/2/29, Juha Manninen juha.mannine...@gmail.com: I was hoping something more concrete and detailed, like ideas for helping new potential contributors to get a softer landing. That was the original idea of this thread. Well, it's not so concrete, but this book might help clarify some topics on the Lazarus management: Producing Open Source Software - How to Run a Successful Free Software Project http://producingoss.com/en/index.html -- João Marcelo http://blog.caixadepandora.com/ -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
[Lazarus] Access violation in build_lcl_docs --outfmt chm
Hello, this is the output: HTML Files written. Collecting other files and compressing...this could take some time Generating Table of contents... Generating Index... Finishing compressing... Exception at 004FFF6F: EAccessViolation: Access violation. 'lcl.chm' has 0 Byte openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 fpc 2.7.1 svn 20450 lazarus svn 35641 Best regards Th. Moritz-- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On 3/1/12 8:58 AM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Rich Saunders schrieb: On 2/29/12 7:35 PM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Juha Manninen schrieb: So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be managed differently from how it is managed now? IMO it's not so much a matter of management, but of mind shift. The developers should share more of their knowledge, apart from only writing code. Until then every management attempt will be ineffective. BTW this is not a criticism on Lazarus only, I found that attitude in many open source projects, and small (one-man) companies. Failure to educate co-workers is usually justified by a lack of time (busy with more important things), and results in never decreasing work load. While you have identified one issue that may not be helped by a change in project management, there are other issues that will be helped. So don't just focus on this one thing and say every management attempt will be ineffective. I wonder what's the intented purpose of your management. In my understanding a management will give instructions, which then are *obeyed*. Everything else is talk about a project, which can happen in any place (mailing list, forums...). No, that is not the management I am talking about. I'm talking about more a coordinator role, an organizer. Here a manager is someone who knows what's going on and who is doing what. Hopefully they will also know the history and reasons why things are the way they are. For example, a documentation manager would know how the documentation is organized, who has contributed what parts, who is currently working on what parts, and why it is done the way it is done. That person would be the best one to respond to any questions on the mailing lists about problems with the documentation. That person does NOT have to be a current developer, in fact probably should not be. But they should know the correct person to ask a specific question of. So they can translate a problem/issue/question from a user and say it in a way that is least likely to bother the expert being questioned. The project could have - a build manager who coordinates all the builds for various platforms, ensuring that each gets attended to when necessary - a communications manager who keeps the mailing lists running smoothly and perhaps also acts as moderator - a public relations manager who organizes the public presence of the project, ensuring that the project looks alive, organized, and attractive to newcomers - a quality manager who organizes test suites, recruits testers, ensures testing is considered when new features are proposed/added These are all tasks that the core developer team can be freed from doing. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
On 01/03/2012 14:54, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Martin schrieb: On 01/03/2012 00:35, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Juha Manninen schrieb: So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be managed differently from how it is managed now? IMO it's not so much a matter of management, but of mind shift. The developers should share more of their knowledge, apart from only writing code. Until then every management attempt will be ineffective. BTW this is not a criticism on Lazarus only, I found that attitude in many open source projects, and small (one-man) companies. Failure to educate co-workers is usually justified by a lack of time (busy with more important things), and results in never decreasing work load. Well but it is a question of philosophy then, isn't it? In either case the answer has very *practical* consequences. Of course. Both ways have pro and con, both have advantages and disadvantages. And I thought, that I had made that clear, in what I wrote. Each developer, contributor or other person, has a certain amount of time. This time gets invested. As with any investment one has to make a decision. based on philosophy and knowledge and other factors. (The same knowledge still leads to different results, depending on the philosophy followed. provide what is required (answer questions) versus provide all (or some/lots) upfront You assume that all questions *have* to be asked. But with insufficient upfront information it can require many questions (and answers), until the discussion reaches the *essential* points. Well if certain questions are ask often enough, so they create more work to be answered, than documented, then they probably will be documented Yes I see, for the new-comer, this is less attractive. But it should be possible to see that for those who answer-or-document this is easier. (As they can choose the cheaper way). The previous given answers are not lost. They can be copy and pasted into the future doc. They can also be found in the mailing list archives. So again it is philosophy. Is the potential newcommer, who will read a small selection of the (assumed complete) docs, worth the work of writing this doc (including the parts that will never be read (even if only because the got replaced due to updates/changes/refactor..., before any one needed them)? I acknowledge the nice to have, but I do not think at all cost. It does still cost time to write up all the info, and guarantees nothing. While if someone wants to do work on something, there are much better chances that the work (providing infos/answers) will bear fruits. This finally explains the often confuse and inconsistent implementations, found across the entire LCL :-( I consider this a sarcasm gone badly wrong. If those kind of implementation exist (rather than just being perceived as such by individuals), then for those there are many reasons possible. Many of which would still apply, even if ass the docs existed. What makes you thing out of all those reasons, it must be the missing docs? And should the person who could answer become unavailable, then yes indeed documentation would help (until outdated, as the sack of a maintainer would lead to this) Just to prevent such an unwanted situation, the initial documentation should accompany the implementation, or follow it immediately. Consider the way how patches have to be acknowledged first, before they become part of the code base. The same principle could be applied to all *new* work on the code base, except bug fixes. Yep you are describing a philosophy here. One of many possible. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Access violation in build_lcl_docs --outfmt chm
On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:31:47 +0100 Thomas Moritz thm...@thmoritz.de wrote: Hello, this is the output: HTML Files written. Collecting other files and compressing...this could take some time Generating Table of contents... Generating Index... Finishing compressing... Exception at 004FFF6F: EAccessViolation: Access violation. 'lcl.chm' has 0 Byte openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 fpc 2.7.1 svn 20450 lazarus svn 35641 It is a bug in the 2.7.1 version of the chmwriter. Can you create a backtrace? Maybe Andrew Haines can help. Mattias -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Martin schrieb: It does still cost time to write up all the info, and guarantees nothing. While if someone wants to do work on something, there are much better chances that the work (providing infos/answers) will bear fruits. This finally explains the often confuse and inconsistent implementations, found across the entire LCL :-( I consider this a sarcasm gone badly wrong. If those kind of implementation exist (rather than just being perceived as such by individuals), then for those there are many reasons possible. Many of which would still apply, even if ass the docs existed. What makes you thing out of all those reasons, it must be the missing docs? Documentation readers will easily find what's wrong with an uncoordinated design, and can point the developers there. Then each involved developer can study the documentation of the others, instead of figuring out what the might had in mind when implementing their isolated parts. E.g. I'm voting for a layout manager interface since years, derived from the already existing DockManager interface. But in the meantime many features have been implemented that make it almost impossible to add layout managers to the TWinControls. Even docking has been broken, and the IDE layout management follows another and again different and incompatible way. The time, spent in such different approaches, could have been used much better. DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
[Lazarus] Lazaras IDE toolbar issue when restoring after running a project
Hi All, I've noticed that the Lazarus IDE toolbar does not restore itself correctly after I run a project, and I have to keep maximising it. Is this a known issue, or is there a setting that I need to set? Thanks in advance Richad Mace -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
On 01/03/2012, Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho felipemonteiro.carva...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys graemeg.li...@gmail.com wrote: In that case, could we ask the wiki maintainers to please disable the wiki Search and Index functions, and rather embed a Google Search in it's place. Yes, that would be a great solution. Unfortunately I don't have access to the wiki server, and I am not sure who has. -- Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus Googling brought up this link - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Google_Custom_Search_Engine Who is the webmaster of the wiki and can this be forwarded to him? -- Frank Church === http://devblog.brahmancreations.com -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Access violation in build_lcl_docs --outfmt chm
On 03/01/12 13:51, Mattias Gaertner wrote: On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:31:47 +0100 Thomas Moritz thm...@thmoritz.de wrote: Hello, this is the output: HTML Files written. Collecting other files and compressing...this could take some time Generating Table of contents... Generating Index... Finishing compressing... Exception at 004FFF6F: EAccessViolation: Access violation. 'lcl.chm' has 0 Byte openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 fpc 2.7.1 svn 20450 lazarus svn 35641 It is a bug in the 2.7.1 version of the chmwriter. Can you create a backtrace? Maybe Andrew Haines can help. I managed to reproduce this. I cannot look into it for a couple of days though. I wonder if something has changed in fpc because it worked until I updated all of fpc but my chm folder was already up to date. I got a backtrace by compiling the packages/chm and util/fpdoc with make OPT=-gl Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x005072e5 in WRITEHEADER (this=0x733f9c80, ISPLACEHOLDER=false) at src/chmfiftimain.pas:291 291 FHeaderRec.LeafNodeCount := TLeafNode(FActiveLeafNode).LeafNodeCount; (gdb) bt #0 0x005072e5 in WRITEHEADER (this=0x733f9c80, ISPLACEHOLDER=false) at src/chmfiftimain.pas:291 #1 0x005078d8 in WRITETOSTREAM (this=0x733f9c80) at src/chmfiftimain.pas:384 #2 0x004f111b in WRITEFIFTIMAIN (this=0x77f54420) at src/chmwriter.pas:1275 #3 0x004f16c2 in WRITEFINALCOMPRESSEDFILES (this=0x77f54420) at src/chmwriter.pas:1365 #4 0x004ef2d4 in GETDATA (this=0x77f54420, COUNT=65536, BUFFER=0x72756050 '') at src/chmwriter.pas:674 #5 0x004ef003 in _GETDATA (ARG=0x77f54420, COUNT=65536, BUFFER=0x72756050) at src/chmwriter.pas:636 #6 0x0050523f in LZX_GET_CHARS (LZI=0x7283fe40, N=65536, BUF=0x72756050 '') at src/paslzxcomp.pas:467 #7 0x0050d4d9 in FILL_BLOCKBUF (LZI=0x7283fe40, MAXCHARS=65536) at src/paslznonslide.pas:174 #8 0x0050d92e in LZ_COMPRESS (LZI=0x7283fe40, NCHARS=65536) at src/paslznonslide.pas:430 #9 0x00506780 in LZX_COMPRESS_BLOCK (LZXD=0x73ef47d0, BLOCK_SIZE=65536, SUBDIVIDE=true (4294967295)) at src/paslzxcomp.pas:1000 #10 0x004f0076 in STARTCOMPRESSINGSTREAM (this=0x77f54420) at src/chmwriter.pas:915 #11 0x004efbb5 in EXECUTE (this=0x77f54420) at src/chmwriter.pas:821 #12 0x00481a8a in WRITEHTMLPAGES (this=0x739a3560) at dw_htmlchm.inc:499 #13 0x0049168f in WRITEDOC (this=0x739a3560) at dw_html.pp:3455 #14 0x004a1605 in CREATEOUTPUT (this=0x77f7e040, APACKAGE=0x77f9e2e0, ENGINE=0x77f7e180) at mkfpdoc.pp:175 #15 0x004a1cce in CREATEDOCUMENTATION (this=0x77f7e040, APACKAGE=0x77f9e2e0, PARSEONLY=false) at mkfpdoc.pp:228 #16 0x00402450 in DORUN (this=0x77f86040) at fpdoc.pp:359 #17 0x00465d50 in CUSTAPP$_$TCUSTOMAPPLICATION_$__$$_RUN () #18 0x004026d2 in main () at fpdoc.pp:375 (gdb) Regards, Andrew -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Access violation in build_lcl_docs --outfmt chm
On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:15:39 -0500 Andrew Haines andrewd...@aol.com wrote: On 03/01/12 13:51, Mattias Gaertner wrote: On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:31:47 +0100 Thomas Moritz thm...@thmoritz.de wrote: Hello, this is the output: HTML Files written. Collecting other files and compressing...this could take some time Generating Table of contents... Generating Index... Finishing compressing... Exception at 004FFF6F: EAccessViolation: Access violation. 'lcl.chm' has 0 Byte openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 fpc 2.7.1 svn 20450 lazarus svn 35641 It is a bug in the 2.7.1 version of the chmwriter. Can you create a backtrace? Maybe Andrew Haines can help. I managed to reproduce this. I cannot look into it for a couple of days though. I wonder if something has changed in fpc because it worked until I updated all of fpc but my chm folder was already up to date. Compile with -Criot and check all places where widestrings and ansistrings come together. Mattias -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
2012/3/1 Everton Vieira tonvie...@gmail.com That`s true. To get the softer landing improving the doc (and i think the ways of it) would be enough. The project management is more about to lead the people to achieve *common* goals. I don`t know how you people from the core lives with so few contributors. The high goal of this thread is to improve that. Right... if you honestly wanted to improve the situation you could start contributing yourself. Until now we have seen only this abstract nonsense from you. So, what does the management mean in practice? About management from the wikipedia: *Project management* is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. Yes, I can read wikipedia. My question included the in practice part. DoDi and others!!! Please don't hijack this thread for whining about documentation and docking and whatnot! You can do that in another thread if you must. Besides, you are supposed to improve the documents, not whine all the time like a baby. I don't know what is wrong with you. I plan, hopefully during Friday, to collect some valid points about how this project should be visible to outsiders, in a constructive way. It really doesn't help things when this thread is filled with irrelevant whining, pushing the signal/noise ratio close to zero. Is it a collective whining period now or what? Juha -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Em 01/03/2012, às 21:14, Juha Manninen escreveu: 2012/3/1 Everton Vieira tonvie...@gmail.com That`s true. To get the softer landing improving the doc (and i think the ways of it) would be enough. The project management is more about to lead the people to achieve common goals. I don`t know how you people from the core lives with so few contributors. The high goal of this thread is to improve that. Right... if you honestly wanted to improve the situation you could start contributing yourself. Until now we have seen only this abstract nonsense from you. Ok. I shall make no more comments on that. So, what does the management mean in practice? About management from the wikipedia: Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. Yes, I can read wikipedia. My question included the in practice part. The in practice is the system itself. It will depend on the politics adopted. This is not abstract. I`m not in the position to say on that. Marco? DoDi and others!!! Please don't hijack this thread for whining about documentation and docking and whatnot! You can do that in another thread if you must. Besides, you are supposed to improve the documents, not whine all the time like a baby. I don't know what is wrong with you. I plan, hopefully during Friday, to collect some valid points about how this project should be visible to outsiders, in a constructive way. It really doesn't help things when this thread is filled with irrelevant whining, pushing the signal/noise ratio close to zero. Is it a collective whining period now or what? Juha -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Contribute to a book instead of wiki?
The book seems to be written with OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice, that would be difficult to track changes. -- View this message in context: http://free-pascal-lazarus.989080.n3.nabble.com/Lazarus-Contribute-to-a-book-instead-of-wiki-tp3789922p3792385.html Sent from the Free Pascal - Lazarus mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Be warned, below there will follow a lot of personal opinions. ;) Am Donnerstag, den 01.03.2012, 01:45 +0200 schrieb Juha Manninen: 2012/2/29 Marco van de Voort mar...@stack.nl Usually they are driven by a foundation and/or core team. Much like FPC nowadays, with occasional alliances with commercial parties that sponsor a certain development. There are not many alternative routes. I was hoping something more concrete and detailed, like ideas for helping new potential contributors to get a softer landing. That was the original idea of this thread. Rich Saunders proposed SMEs, people to intermediate between core developers and users. It may be a good idea, I only wonder how would it be organized in practical day-to-day life. Many issues discussed here could be solved by improving documentation. Especially there should be a page listing tasks suitable for new people. However that does not change the management anyhow, it only helps people find those things easier. Maybe it's a bit more than only improving documentation itself. The project management part of it is to care for keeping docs up to date and keep the shape following the needs. An example would be some kind of general info pages about how the project is driven. Special index pages or future plans come to my mind here. Another issue with that is already in the works, that is transferring content from the wiki to other doc parts. But this too is not only a technical problem but it has to be done regularly (whenever necessary or before releases or by time interval) and watched a bit. Someone has to decide which parts are ready to get moved. So, what does the management mean in practice? Should Lazarus be managed differently from how it is managed now? No,the management is mostly fine as is. It it's only sort of hidden or not easy to step in for newcomers. I think the missing beginners page could do a lot, it can tell people shortly how things work and that problem are best handled on the mailing lists (although it is sometimes challenging to folow all that traffic ;). This beginners guide should be visible not only on the wikis starting page but on the home page of the project, at least as a link to the wiki. Standard project management procedures only apply partly here. There is no ressource planning, no strict time schedules, no accounting, to name a few. And the project is not as big as ohter open source project requiring formal procedure for anything to be done. As long as the mailing lists can handle the amount of questions they are perfect for handling most things. And the persons answering question do an excellent job in answering, fixing problem in code or with web servers, very quickly as we all now. Since those problems pop up from time to time it may be a good source of information to scan the mailing lists archive for the type of requests from newbies to get the most wanted issues. -- Marc Santhoff m.santh...@web.de -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Project management
Juha Manninen schrieb: DoDi and others!!! Please don't hijack this thread for whining about documentation and docking and whatnot! You can do that in another thread if you must. Besides, you are supposed to improve the documents, not whine all the time like a baby. I don't know what is wrong with you. Please note that I already contributed to the project, both code and documentation. In this thread the *observations*, made during that work, certainly are on-topic. When I find something that went wrong in the past, we should check how such flaws could be reduced or prevented by certain means, e.g. by a better management. Your comment seems to prove my impression, that the management discussion is limited to do whatever you like, but don't change the current procedures. If so, then I apologize for my boring contributions. DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Access violation in build_lcl_docs --outfmt chm
Am Donnerstag, 1. März 2012, 19:51:17 schrieb Mattias Gaertner: Hello Mattias, this is the output: HTML Files written. Collecting other files and compressing...this could take some time Generating Table of contents... Generating Index... Finishing compressing... Exception at 004FFF6F: EAccessViolation: Access violation. 'lcl.chm' has 0 Byte openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 fpc 2.7.1 svn 20450 lazarus svn 35641 It is a bug in the 2.7.1 version of the chmwriter. Can you create a backtrace? Maybe Andrew Haines can help. Meanwhile, Andrew had already written ... To debug I must rewrite my 'fpc.spec'. Otherwise, gdb gives nothing useful. Best regards Th. Moritz-- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Missing Documentation
Op 2 maart 2012 00:04 heeft Frank Church vfcli...@gmail.com het volgende geschreven: Googling brought up this link - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Google_Custom_Search_Engine Who is the webmaster of the wiki and can this be forwarded to him? I was, but I want to stop doing it. Vincent -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
