Yes, thanks Susan for expressing in a nice clear form what I was going to write in a waffly and hard to parse way. To stay in form I'm going to add some more waffle now:
The hardest part of writing software is the design, and typically that doesn't parallelise well. It really does take a signle person with a vision to make it work: much of the success of inkscape is down to the strong vision of bbyak around the UI. I think if we want to go ahead with SMIL (and I think that this is a great idea and one that mental and I have been kicking around for the better part of a decade :) we need to work out how the user interface is going to work. That means lots of neat, clear drawings of the interactions, precise specification of how specific example tasks are performed, and a careful reading of the SMIL spec to see how it would actually work. Adding animation is a lot harder than adding a timeline view and a few extra tool buttons.
Perhaps the first step is to understand how all the existing animation software works and where it falls down.
I think we would also need a fairly complete rewrite of the rendering pipeline to deal with animation and more complex canvas editting. (@tweenk?)
Are there any tasks which would get us closer to smil support but have direct pay off in themself? Generally big rewrite from scratch type projects fail, it is much better to work out where you want to go, and then take small, safe steps in that direction. One obvious step would be to work more on the connector and layout tools and make them better than (or at least match) omnigraffle. Last I looked the layout updating was very clunky and inefficient without any live updating. Fix this first and you'll be closer to animation and you'll have an immediate payoff.
I think the complaining about the board is ill-placed: they want inkscape to succeed as much as anyone here; but they also have been around a long time and have seen a lot of free software projects fail. I have no doubt that if we had a good design and project plan they would get behind it in a flash, but we're talking about multiple programmer years of work and they are being conservative with very good reason. njh
On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 02:47:21PM -0500, Martin Owens wrote:
Hey Susan,
This is a great list.
I'd like to put myself forward for both design and programming. Publishing updates and making videos showing progress also available.
We should secure some space/resource for testers too.
All the best, Martin Owens
On Sat, 2013-11-30 at 13:39 -0600, Susan Spencer wrote:
As mentioned previously in this thread, details of fundraising are typically
discussed *after* a proper estimate is developed.
If this is a serious discussion (which I believe it is) then the following actions are up next:
- Identify the programmers, testers, documenters and users
who will participate. (Participants can assume multiple roles)
- The programmers collaborate to create & share the
requirements and constraints
- The testers specify & share the testing and signoff
requirements, based on output of #2
- All participants specify documentation requirements to meet
needs of both the users and the future developers/maintainers
Estimate the cost & delivery schedule
Design the fundraising campaign (which is another separate effort)
if you're going to raise funds from the public then you can't be code cowboys about this, no matter if you believe this is a relatively small effort.
Performing the above steps and publishing the results helps build momentum for public monetary support and creates tremendous public confidence.
it also gives the tech media something to report regularly building up to the fundraising start date. Use the machine wisely, publicity never hurts!
Assuming that remote collaboration results require more time than face-to-face sprints, we can shoot for 30 to 60 days for #1-5, 30 days maximum for #6,
so max 90 days till fundraising.
My skills aren't in programming, but if you would like me to I can help with project development & fundraising. If there are others more connected to Inkscape than I who would like to step up for this work, please do!
- Susan
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