Hi Larry, I'm also one of the content timeline users, I used it in multiple projects. I also noticed the vibrant community here. The reason for my worries were the de-facto unmaintained state of the project and the complexity of the timeline software.
Don't get me wrong, the simile timeline is one of the best-coded javascript projects I've seen so far, but it definitely needs bright contributors. Anyway your proposed strategy seems fine for me: move the project to github, were people can contribute patches more efficiently and don't put the stability of the timeline trunk at risk. For the next commits/releases, I'd go for the low-hanging fruits: remove the "ancient" timeline script preloader and offer a timeline.min.js, that can be loaded via lab.js or some other ultra- efficient preloader. This definitely leads to faster startup times and will make the users happy :) regards, Franz On 10 Apr., 06:11, LarryK <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Everybody, > > As the committer who created the last several releases and many many > updates (see the log), here is my take on this question: > > Timeline is definitely a current, live, useful, open source project: > * Most importantly, the true status of open source projects are really > defined by their community, not by the software. And Timeline, I'm > proud to say, has a large and vibrant community of people who actively > help out others when they have Timeline questions. (Via this mailing > list.) -- I can't emphasize enough, how important and wonderful this > community is to the project. It is the community that makes a project > come alive and stay alive. > > Also: > * The software is used by many many private, public, commercial and > non-commercial sites around the world. > * The software solves a real and active problem very well. > * The software is an important part of a funded MIT project, Exhibit. > > To everyone who has helped out someone else via this email list: Thank > you Thank you Thank you! > > But...as noted by MacKenzie, Timeline development is not currently > funded by MIT or anyone else. > > And, most of the people interested in Timeline want to be users of the > software, not developers of it. (That's fine.) > Also, many of the people interested in further developing the software > don't have the expertise or time for what is needed. > Eg, if you look at the changes log, you'll see some prior commits that > I had to roll back when a change broke the software. This is why I > created the test pages. And more frequently, there have been code > submissions to me that would not work or would break the test pages. > (The changes were submitted via email or the bugs/issues system.) > > Plus, integrating a patch into an svn source tree takes a lot of time > if you want to carefully test the proposed changes. So one or two poor > submissions meant that I realized I had to carefully test *all* of the > submissions. Since my time for Timeline is small and decreasing, I had > to prioritize the issues that were important to me. Sorry. > > Note that Timeline is what I call "systems-level" software. It is a > large, sophisticated, object-oriented, multi-browser software base. > Making good forward progress with the Timeline code base requires a 4 > year CS degree or equivalent, at a bare minimum. Remember that the sw > was written and then re-written by *extremely* bright MIT PhD folks. > This software base isn't for a newbie! (The most surprising > submissions have been from people who tried to work on the minimized > Javascript library instead of using the real source. -- What were they > thinking?) > > WHAT'S NEEDED / NEXT STEPS > While the number of qualified developers interested in the Timeline > project is few, it is very important to provide them with the maximum > encouragement! And more importantly, the only way to see if someone's > proposed submission is good is to have a better submission/code > management system. The good news is that such a system exists, git > with github. > > Using the git system, anyone can create their own version of the > source tree, make changes to it, then propose to the project > management that their changes be integrated back into the main trunk. > This is how the Yahoo people run their YUI project. They have the same > problem of a sophisticated code base that needs to be carefully > curated. > > So the next step, in my opinion, is to move (not fork!) the svn tree > of Timeline and the "Ajax" tree (see the source) to GitHub. > But I need the buy-in and approval of the project leaders David H, > David K, and Stefano before doing that. I'll email them. > > PRIORITIES / NEW RELEASES > Yes, certainly the current 2.3.1 release is a bit long in the tooth > and needs to be replaced. > My personal priorities are: > 1) Move to github > 2) Get the release scripts tuned up and working in the new > environment. > 3) Update to current version of JQuery > 4) No longer use the "auto-magic" startup code that loads the > libraries and adds them to the dom. Why: current best practice for > quickest page display is to load JS libraries at the end of the page > load, not at the beginning (as stock Timeline does). It is also better > to let the website developer put all Timeline scripts together into > one bigger file rather than smaller files that are auto-loaded. Eg a > current Timeline page loads 4 JS files (ajax, ajax bundle, timeline > bundle, signal). This should be reduced to 1 or 2 (JQuery would be the > second file.) > > After that, there are many other bugs to be fixed and features to be > added. Hopefully the community will step up! -- The github move would > really help to enable this. Or I or someone else could be paid to work > on it (that's already happened in the past.) > > Comments? Questions? > > Regards, > > Larry Kluger > ps. I read every bug/issue submission and update. But I just don't > have much time to work on the sw these days. The sw continues to work > very well for me and my projects--I use the current version myself. > > pps. Unfortunately, I'm only able to read the mailing list > infrequently. > > On Mar 28, 9:41 am, codebeneath <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Is this to say there are several people who have commit access to > > Timeline codebase who are addressing filed issues or possibly applying > > patches provided via the issue tracker? Of particular interest we > > have, we think that the orthoginal scrolling capability alone is > > significant enough to warrent a 2.4.0 release. Is there anyone > > available who could cut such a release from existing trunk? > > > Thanks, > > > Jeff > > > On Mar 26, 7:34 am, mackenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > To amplify this a bit, there is no active Time project nowadays > > > (hasn't been for a couple of years now) but there is an active > > > community, as Alexey says, who use Timeline and maintain the code. The > > > only active project going on now that I'm aware of is Exhibit 3 > > > (simile-widgets.org/exhibit3). > > > > MacKenzie > > > > On Mar 25, 1:22 am, jqueryui-vienna <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > I just wanted to know about the current status of the simile timeline > > > > project. The last commit to its svn trunk was in 2009, so the question > > > > arises if if still is active. > > > > > Are there any planned releases or some roadmap? > > > > > Franz -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SIMILE Widgets" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/simile-widgets?hl=en.
