On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Contributors, contributors, contributors.
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 07:48:14PM -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
- "Paint by Number" projects
============================== I think the reason our roadmaps, bug/rfe trackers, etc. haven't worked at getting more people contributing, is because oftentimes the procedure for doing the fix or implementation is extremely obscure.
Here's some thoughts on plans around the paint by numbers idea...
- Select (say) 3 areas in the codebase to focus on, that
- There are many bugs/rfe's of relevance
- Core developers think are important to be worked on
- Won't be too intimidating to novices
- Several people already understand moderately well
File format support is often a good target since they tend to be desirable but non-essential, and there tends to be an example you can reuse from the other file formats filters (harder to get people to reuse existing libraries though). Breaking down the task list further to very specific features could help, like how the desire for specifc PDF features inspired a lot of work in that area. "A good start is half the work", Bryce has said before that only when the groundwork was laid for a task did others seem ready to help out and we are looking at the same phenomenon again in different ways.
Those colour effects announce recently seem like the kind of feature that once one native version was implemented the work to add more would be incremental and potentially make good tasks.
- Give thanks to each person who participates
Saying thanks is cheap but of great value.
Not something we say often often so let me say again thanks for the software, and thanks to the developers for making this such a great place to puzzle over problems. I love how this project gets the "big ideas" and how discussions like these happen and are actually quite productive.