Uwe Stöhr wrote: > ( I see now in mail-archive.com this thread. It would have been nice to > send me at least a direct mail to assure that I am informed. In the past > I could read the list via NNTP but my ISP dropped that feature. When I > am abroad I don't read mail-archive.com .)
Do you mean that your ISP does not provide an NNTP server anymore, or that it actively blocks the NNTP ports? The former would not be any problem (just use news.gmane.org, which I am doing btw as well). The latter would be a strange ISP. > It would be nice if you give me the chance to fix this in lyx2lyx > instead of removing the feature. I already did that for you: https://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org/msg189325.html However, I still think that the paragraph alignment can be used instead, and would like to have an explanation what is wrong with the paragraph version. If the box alignment is kept, then we need a considerable amount of work to finish it (see the other messages in this thread), and the question is who would do that. > I feel a lot of aggression against me in todays' posts. Maybe it was > wrong to do again something for LyX. LyX is no longer the project I > liked. There are now many rules making it hard for people like me, who > don't program in their job, to follow. IIRC the rules in the past were more strict. Anybody remembering the old changelogs which had much more detailed descriptions of the changes, and the requirement to send all patches to the list first? The only exception is the rule about the tex2lyx tests, but it has already proven to be very useful, because the tests have already detected many bugs which would have gone unnoticed for a long time otherwise. The last such case was the wrong symbol for 0x0320 in lib/unicodesymbols, which was detected after a recent addition by Günter because a) you created a test case with this symbol a long time ago and b) we require that the tests do always pass. The other rules listed in Development.lyx have basically always been there, but never explicitly documented. > I see that I won't be able to > follow LyX's development in future since even Git is too hard for me to > handle. I never need a console in my life or work and therefore cannot > remember all these commands. (E.g. I spent 2 hours to get cherry-picking > to work before I gave up. - Some months ago I could use this feature but > forgot it.) For those who use a commit system daily it is not easy to > understand. You are not the only one who has trouble using git: https://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org/msg187328.html For example, I mainly use git for LyX development like "svn + stash", and keep two separate working trees for branch and master. I would recommend a similar worflow for you as well, this would also avoid rebasing problems as those which were fixed with 741e5267131. Many git features are confusing for me as well, and I always have the impression that the defaults are wrong (e.g. I always use git cherry-pick -n). Fortunately all this is configurable, so if you find out a workflow once you can write it down and do not need to understand the details anymore for using it in the future. > The idea was to document everything to make it possible for people like > me to follow the development but obviously I am still the only Win > developer so that the LyX coding docs only reflect how it works on Unix. > Since my coding abilities are very limited I fear I will sooner or later > loose track how to compile LyX - which will then also be the end of a > Windows installer release. It all depends on you. Many people are willing to help (me included). If you don't know how to do something, please ask, and we will find a solution. I do however expect that once a solution has been found, you will remember it (by whatever method that works for you) and not ask the same question again. I also expect all developers to learn from mistakes. It is no problem if something goes wrong, but if the reasons for a mistake have been identified, then I expect that they will be avoided in the future. > Sorry for changing the topic. If I am nevertheless welcome you should > know that I will also in future be off completely for weeks (I hope no > longer for months). In these periods I tried at least to keep the > installer running. We all have times when real life interferes for a shorter or longer period. Sometimes there are also emergencies, so somebody needs to stop all work completely for an unforseeable amount of time. IMHO the LyX developers can cope well with such cases, and nobody needs to justify if he needs to stop. However, if such a period ends, and there is time again for LyX development, then I expect that no new fun stuff is started until all leftover stuff from previous work is addressed. It is important that there is some balance between developers for fun and non-fun work, otherwise those who do most of the non-fun stuff will sooner or later be frustrated and quit. My frustration was mainly caused by the "history is repeating" feeling: In May, I spent a lot of time fixing up (mainly the tex2lyx tests) after a series of many changes by you, which kept coming although you were asked to stop until the issues are solved. Back then, we also had long discussions how the tests work, I spent a lot of time explaining the details, and the documentation was updated. I invested all this time because a) somebody had to do the cleanup work and b) I hoped that something would be learned from that. During the last days it looked now as if all this work (and the one I started recently) was wasted, because the same issues happened again: New stuff kept coming in despite we asked to stop, and the new commits contained the same problems as the ones in May. I had to express my frustration somehow, but this is now done and we can concentrate on the future. Finally, I believe that your impression that everybody else is a professional software developer, that LyX development is only for those, and that you are severly limited by not being one, is a bit exaggerating this difference. When I started LyX development, I had almost no experience with C++ and software development. I learned a lot of what I know today on this list, and I am very thankful for that. Today, I am one of the more experienced guys and can give something back. IMHO it is a big plus of this list that you can ask almost any question, and you will get a useful answer. I firmly believe that you can do a lot of useful stuff without being a full- time software developer. For the things you do not understand, you always have the option to learn how they work in detail, or simply to use a recipe that you can execute without knowing much about the internal workings, and for some areas which do indeed require some deep knowledge you can simply remember not to touch them (e.g. src/support/weighted_btree.h would be a file I would not touch without some good computer science background). Georg
