On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 07:59:19PM -0600, Bob Jamison wrote:
Wow, I wish that we could harness all of this email-writing energy on the topic, and focus it on the actual work.
Totally agreed. Our motto early in the project was "Patch first, discuss later."
You were absolutely right on your blog. The ratio of developers to users on win32 is much lower than on Linux. If we had just one or two more developers, it would -double- our abilities.
I am hopeful a silver lining of this will be an increased awareness of our need for help in maintaining the Windows port. We get so many Windows bug reports; I really appreciate the work you've put in to investigate and solve so many of them, but I can definitely imagine how burned out you must feel on this.
Since the win32 stuff has never been a release in its own right, but just an alternate way of building Inkscape, I don't see any problem with releasing Inkscape immediately, and getting a win32 build out whenever it's ready. People can always get a copy off the server. I mean, we build it several times a day. Just pick a build and package it. And if the users don't like it, then we can refund their money. I am a big fan of Fedora, and would -love- to see 0.46 in Fedora 9.
Thanks, yes it sounds like we'll take this approach. The main concerns Bulia and others have voiced around doing this is in relation to the PR, and having a divided message. I'm not as concerned about that but can see the point, and the proposal to delay PR for a few weeks to give the Windows port additional time to catch up sounds like an acceptable compromise, and would maximize Inkscape's uptake on both Win and Lin.
I'll see what patches we need to get printing working well again soon. Maybe we can do the switch to using the new Cairo1.5+ win32_printing_surface in a patch ourselves, rather than wait for Gtk to do it. If so, then maybe a Cairo guy could help us. There ya go. A good opportunity to delegate. :-)
I understand 1.6 is also coming real soon now.
I have been slightly annoyed recently with the vaguely implied idea that we don't -want- to fix this bug, and that any problems we have with Inkscape must be a symptom of our laziness and disrespect for the user. I can assure people that considerable effort has already been spent on this. I have been hoping that the increased clamoring would be accompanied with increased volunteering. I haven't seen it yet, but Hope Springs Eternal.
I was reflecting back on what got all of us involved in Inkscape to start with. By and large I think we each got involved not because Inkscape was perfect, but the contrary - we saw Inkscape's potential, but something was broken or missing and we felt we could fix it.
So, to look for a silver lining in our current Windows troubles, putting a release out without a Windows build could actually work out well in the long term: It could be the call-to-arms that brings in more people to assist in maintaining it.
Bryce