On Feb 13, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Peter Kelly wrote:
>> On 14 Feb 2015, at 1:42 am, Dennis E. Hamilton <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> One important lesson in my career is to not assume what is easy and
>> hard for others, especially when it mainly exists as a mental
>> edifice in the mind of the supposer.
>
> This is very true. In fact those who are intimately familiar with a given
> codebase are generally the people least able to make such a judgement.
>
> It’s always difficult for someone who knows an entire codebase to figure out
> how to document and arrange tasks to be done, due to being “too close”, so to
> speak, to the code. I’ve gone through the exact same problem in my current
> day job - in which I’ve come onto a project written by a single person, with
> very little documentation. Over a period of several months, working closely
> with the original developer, I’ve come to gain a solid understanding of most
> (but not all) of the codebase.
>
> Questions, exploration, trying things out, getting stuck, and more questions
> is what I found to be the only effective way. As Jan mentioned, documentation
> can only go far, and there’s a learning process involved.
>
> Tell me what information you need, and I’ll give it to you. I’m here to help.
Very true. Some time ago you answered my questions about the architecture.
Although I am very busy, sooner or later I will engage the build and then I can
see where to apply my programming or architecture skills.
Let's test my memory - the underlying architecture conceptually simple enough
in no particular order.
HTML editing - HTML editing with JS
HTML presentation / common layer - HTML rendering with CSS
DocFormats structure core library
input document in a particular mime-type
output document in a particular mime-type
update document in a particular mime-type
filters to support mime-type selection.
If this is correct then I think there is enough to help potential contributors
find out how to scratch their particular itch. We don't even need to elaborate
the skills needed a reasonable rough description should be enough.
Regards,
Dave
>
> —
> Dr Peter M. Kelly
> [email protected]
>
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>
