On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 09:10:54AM -0700, Kayvan A. Sylvan wrote: > Do you have any examples? Be as specific as you can.
Kayvan, I returned to evaluate whether to jump back into the LyX effort over a period of weeks and months (as I said in one of my first postings in 2003). Those focused on GUII and code cleanup -- efforts that I'm not very interested in, and that I always viewed as potential distractions -- have had *years* to pursue their agenda. Maybe, finally, time was ripe to reinvigorate some of the ambitions I've encountered around the world for LyX software, documented partly in the LyX mailing lists, but perhaps more in some archived private emails and a handful of personal recollections. The reception offered here is less than encouraging. > Can you be categorically sure that cleaning up and re-architecting was > not the fastest way to new features? (this requires some cost vs. benefit > analysis) I am categorical on the subject, because LyX has been in an effective "feature freeze" for a number of years. In fact, cleaning up and re-architecting was often promoted as the fastest way to new features, but several years have past. Seeing LyX's recent progress as a "feature freeze" is really a big-picture statement, reflecting a certain perspective, more than it is a "fact". One unfortunately can't make this observation without ruffling a lot of feathers, which was never my intention. If you don't share the perspective, I guess you just don't. > comparing the number of hours that would have been spent > maintaining and kludging bad architecture to add features with the > amount of time spent in "cleanup" efforts). Well, I think you'd have to acknowledge that a lot was accomplished kludging the "bad architecture". Whether it reached its limits, it's hard to say. Is history now, a part of the past. If LyX is not "bright, spanking and clean" internally by now, at least its internals should no longer forstall other improvements, right? And now Kayvan, for some reason you've dropped what reads like a legal due diligence checklist of questions, all focused on the past. I'm really not interested in that. > List the evil-red-text constructs that you would like replaced > by LyX features and how you would imagine it working. OK, that's about the future. That part of the discussion, which included UI replacements of ERT constructs, innovative templates, new environments and document classes, and lots more, goes back several years. Some of it on the lists, some not. The real question is whether the time is ripe to renew such discussion. The indications, so far (on the list at least) are, maybe, no.
