On Mon, 5 Jan 2009 23:40:42 -0500
"Hisham Mardam Bey" <hisham.mardam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 8:24 PM, Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
> <barbi...@profusion.mobi> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 8:00 PM, Luchezar Petkov
> > <luchezar.pet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
> >> <barbi...@profusion.mobi> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I did basic categorization of enlightenment items and also remove
> >>> the idea to drop 16bpp engines as we'll use it in our projects.
> >>>
> >>> most showstopper atm is file manager items, I think we can do
> >>> without them so would flag them (all, or at least most of them)
> >>> as "optional".
> >>
> >> I'd disagree with you here. A nice fm is really important to the
> >> end users. Using external file browser is just an ugly way (imo)
> >> and would 1) make less experienced users ask lots of questions
> >> about how to deal with files when using E (and why (and how)
> >> should they bother installing external fm) and 2) probably distro
> >> packagers are going to pack E with Thunar or something and I don't
> >> like that. I'm aware that the fm is probably one of the hardest
> >> things to do in E17, but it is too important to just... not finish
> >> it.
> >
> > But it's mostly working for "joe-the-user". Sure, having things like
> > Ctrl-{x,c,v} is good, but not hard or blocking.
> >
>
> I would just like to point something out quickly here. We (the EFL /
> E17 team) have waited so long before doing a release that anything
> that is not "perfect and done" is going to prove exactly what a lot of
> the public thinks of EFL / E17; namely that its vapor ware that will
> never be completed. We can't afford to release anything that is half
> done after this extremely long time period of "working on E17".
This is true, but it's also a misconception of the public that all this
time was spent just working on E17. This is hardly the case and many
people are already using the EFL and are mostly awaiting a release so
they have a stable target to develop against. E17 has been a long time
coming for sure, but I think people discount the amount of code that
has been written and the small number of dedicated developers we have.
And the use of the term vaporware is crap as well. Vaporware doesn't
exist at all. E17 and the EFL both exist in a very real way and the
lack of a stable release doesn't change that. If all the code was
closed up and no one could use it, I could see people coming to this
conclusion. Fact is people can use E17 because we have "released" it via
CVS/SVN. Anyone who calls it vaporware is a moron.
>
> Had we done smaller incremental releases we could have afforded to
> introduce incomplete features every now and then, right now, I
> personally think we should take that bit of extra time to really
> finish and polish anything that is incomplete or simply exclude it
> from the release plan and release it afterward as an E17.1 or E17.2.
>
This is true. People may have been more willing to accept bugs and
such, but it would have also put us in a position of offering a lot
more documentation and support for users who couldn't debug to save
their life, let alone explain their issue clear enough. By "releasing"
a development version via a source repository you attempt to attract
more developers then users so you can free yourself from answering user
questions 24/7. Of course a lot of users have started using E17 and
that's fine, but they hopefully realize that what they are using is not
finished. People packaging doesn't help that, but we can at least
focus more on development then support.
Now with that said, an initial release will be good as soon as most of
the bugs are ironed out. Feature wise I think we can sacrifice some of
the more advanced and difficult to implement features for the initial
release. For the release, we will need more documentation, tutorials,
etc. It will also require some form of support, but the long time
CVS/SVN users can help with that hopefully.
In any case, I think the biggest thing a release will do is generate a
bit of PR for E and hopefully bring a new rush of developers/users who
are willing and able to help out wherever they can. If anything we will
have a release that can be packaged and users can easily install. This
will lower the amount of build questions that seem to consume so much
of our support time now. So this could be very good for everyone, but
like you said, we need to make sure it's pretty damn good or the
backlash could be brutal. Even if we do make a quality release, I
expect a lot of crap flinging from all angles just because people like
to hate beautiful things :)
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