Hey all,
It seems like a good time to discuss non-programming related items given the icon conversation. I figure we can get some thoughts out on the list and work from there. Basically, let's try and free the people who program from the tasks that the rest of us can do. ;) It's common for people to say "well if I could program I'd...", well, if you can't, but want more programming done on inkscape... here's your chance!
The website: Realistically, we should probably have 2 or 3 volunteers that will agree to submit at least 1 news item per month. Bryce shouldn't be the only one. ;) It seems like it should be a fairly minimal commitment.
I'm willing to fill one of those spots myself. I'll throw together something before the end of the week that talks about the persistent undo history that the MIT students are working on, and link to their page. Bryce, are you even still interested? On top of that, do you have the time? Either way, it is not difficult to find a couple news worthy items per month. Any other takers?
Tutorials: Ryan Lerch and myself started to do some tutorial work for this development cycle a while back. I haven't contributed to this for a couple months as it seemed like there were still a number of changes going on at that point (plus a very busy schedule on my end). Luckily, it appears things are slowing down now on both fronts, so it seems like an opportune time to pick this back up. It's good for us to have more tutorials that focus on using features of inkscape (such as the in-progress clipping/masking/patterns tutorial), rather than tutorials for doing a particular task (easter egg). Do we have any volunteers to help us with tutorial writing/updating?
Current discussion and drafts can be found at: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TutorialUpdates-0.46
Also, as for tutorial localization and to attempt simplifying our files and the process for translators, I know there was discussion in the past about po2xml. Can anyone enlighten me on if this has change has been done? I've not updated my checkout of the tutorials in quite a while. If not, is this a huge task? Will there be any changes in formatting or the process for tutorial writers?
Screenshots: Okay, do we think that artsy screenshots are in order yet? I have one that utilizes a number of filters, but a key piece of filter rendering is not correct (it's using turbulence). I also have an in-progress one that I'm using some filters on, but more importantly going to town with live path effects. Curve stitching is turning out to be my favorite feature in this dev cycle. :)
The About screen: I just want to follow up on this. I know we're most likely not ready to go for it yet (as there are a number of filter bugs remaining). But I am just wondering if we think we're getting closer. Also, did Jon Phillips want to host this via ocal or create? Or are we going deviantART again? Just want to coordinate.
Bugs & Feature Requests: Another area that generally needs attention is our bug and rfe trackers. It is always a big help if people can go through bug reports & feature requests and try to close duplicates, reproduce bugs, ask for more information where necessary, etc. Unfortunately, people submit items without searching the trackers first, so duplicates are quite common. Also, it's common that people will file a report and the issue is resolved in a development cycle, but they never come back to say that the issue has been fixed for them. Another common issue is anonymous bug reports. These get reported and never followed up on by the original poster as there is no way for us to contact them (these are fairly common to get fixed, but we don't get confirmation from those people). Anyone interested in helping with these that doesn't have access, please let us know.
Thank you all for your time.
-Josh
P.S. Unrelated, is the 3d box tool not going to be activated for the next release?
On 10/30/07, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
P.S. Unrelated, is the 3d box tool not going to be activated for the next release?
I really hope so! Max, what is your status?
BTW the lack of this icon on the toolbar is one thing that holds us back with regard to screenshots.
bulia byak schrieb:
On 10/30/07, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
P.S. Unrelated, is the 3d box tool not going to be activated for the next release?
I really hope so! Max, what is your status?
I'll definitely see to making this happen. I need to apologize to all people who are waiting for it to be activated. As mentioned a couple of times before, I'm currently studying for my finals (the first out of four examinations is due next week), which leaves me very little time to work on it. I wish it were otherwise.
As for the current state, I'd say I'm about halfway through the restructuring process that is needed to put the tool on a robust basis for closing some nasty bugs (most notably those in the tracker) and make it ready for further refinement and expansion. It's hard to say how long it will take to complete this step. Maybe only a week or two when I have sufficient time again (which may already be the case next week), although I prefer not to make any promises. :( But I certainly don't want it to miss this release. Not if I can prevent it (which I can, I suppose :)).
Max
Maximilian Albert wrote:
As for the current state, I'd say I'm about halfway through the restructuring process [...]
Hmm, seems I still don't completely catch on to the way signals are handled in Inkscape. As part of the abovementioned refactoring, I want the 3D box sides to be SPObjects, too (before, they were handled somewhat separately by the parent box). Now I'm experiencing problems with live updates when dragging handles. Depending on which displayUpdates to the box (i.e., the parent group) or its sides are triggered at which location in the code, either no visual updates happen during dragging or I get warnings like "Requested update while update in progress". Shouldn't a displayUpdate of the box automatically trigger the corresponding update of its children? Do I need to use SP_OBJECT_CHILD_MODIFIED_FLAG instead of SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG? Am I simply calling the updates from the wrong locations? Or am I missing something else? Any suggestions are appreciated.
Max
On 10/30/07, Maximilian Albert <Anhalter42@...173...> wrote:
Hmm, seems I still don't completely catch on to the way signals are handled in Inkscape. As part of the abovementioned refactoring, I want the 3D box sides to be SPObjects, too (before, they were handled somewhat separately by the parent box). Now I'm experiencing problems with live updates when dragging handles. Depending on which displayUpdates to the box (i.e., the parent group) or its sides are triggered at which location in the code, either no visual updates happen during dragging or I get warnings like "Requested update while update in progress". Shouldn't a displayUpdate of the box automatically trigger the corresponding update of its children?
Base it on SPGroup - does it update its children? Looks like it does, based on the flags, see CGroup::onUpdate. (I don't know who created CGroup and why it's not just in sp_group_update.)
Do I need to use
SP_OBJECT_CHILD_MODIFIED_FLAG instead of SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG?
These flags are a bit of a black magic. They are inherited from Sodipodi and I'm not sure anyone now completely understands the way they work (although Mental may be able to elaborate more on them). You will need to experiment I'm afraid, and of course base your code on existing code that works.
On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 11:39 -0400, bulia byak wrote:
Base it on SPGroup - does it update its children? Looks like it does, based on the flags, see CGroup::onUpdate. (I don't know who created CGroup and why it's not just in sp_group_update.)
Do I need to use
SP_OBJECT_CHILD_MODIFIED_FLAG instead of SP_OBJECT_MODIFIED_FLAG?
So far as I recall, CHILD_MODIFIED_FLAG isn't ever used directly -- it's set during update propagation, on any SPObject (SPGroup?) which has children with MODIFIED_FLAG set.
-mental
On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 10:35:00AM -0700, Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The website: Realistically, we should probably have 2 or 3 volunteers that will agree to submit at least 1 news item per month. Bryce shouldn't be the only one. ;) It seems like it should be a fairly minimal commitment.
I'm willing to fill one of those spots myself. I'll throw together something before the end of the week that talks about the persistent undo history that the MIT students are working on, and link to their page. Bryce, are you even still interested? On top of that, do you have the time? Either way, it is not difficult to find a couple news worthy items per month. Any other takers?
Work has been sucking my attention the past few months, but going forward I think I'll be less time crunched. In any case, if people send me news items directly, I usually am able to get to it within a few days.
It would save a huge amount of time to have prepared news items written up (even if in broken english) and sent to me directly to draw from. The text should be at least one paragraph, no more than 2-3 (if more is needed, put the additional text onto a wiki page or somewhere, with a link to it from the brief news item). Graphics to go along with the stories is also nice to have, esp. if an icon can be created to be included in the story itself. Then I can take these and do the html and whatever to put them live on the site.
Bugs & Feature Requests: Another area that generally needs attention is our bug and rfe trackers.
Agreed. Also, I'd like to emphasize that people can do bug triage even if they do not have technical experience, as long as they have good Inkscape know-how and can be friendly communicating with users.
I've been gaining a lot of experience doing bug triaging for Ubuntu's Xorg (which like Inkscape has many, many bugs), and have a number of ideas on how we could structure things to work much better that I'd love to share with new bug triagers.
Bryce
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The website: Realistically, we should probably have 2 or 3 volunteers that will agree to submit at least 1 news item per month. Bryce shouldn't be the only one. ;) It seems like it should be a fairly minimal commitment.
I've been planning on helping with this, I guess now's a good time to start :)
I've just reviewed website editing on the wiki - anything else I should know?
Also, are there any standards for what is considered Inkscape news?
Finally, if anyone is interested in passing an idea along to me, I'll be happy to write it up and post it.
JF
Bulia, is there any reason you'd not want me to take your new features summaries and write these up as news articles? I think they'd be the perfect sort of thing for eager users to read - I just don't want to step on your toes ;)
JF
On 10/30/07, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
Bulia, is there any reason you'd not want me to take your new features summaries and write these up as news articles? I think they'd be the perfect sort of thing for eager users to read - I just don't want to step on your toes ;)
No stepping - feel free - the more people know about the new features the better :)
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The website: Realistically, we should probably have 2 or 3 volunteers that will agree to submit at least 1 news item per month. Bryce shouldn't be the only one. ;) It seems like it should be a fairly minimal commitment.
I've been planning on helping with this, I guess now's a good time to start :)
Great to hear!
I've just reviewed website editing on the wiki - anything else I should know?
Not really. Perhaps for now, submitting news blurbs to Bryce (as he mentioned) is a good way to get rolling with it.
Also, are there any standards for what is considered Inkscape news?
Well, it involving Inkscape is a good start. ;) Honestly, if you see any inkscape related articles anywhere, anything interesting going on in inkscape development, etc.
Finally, if anyone is interested in passing an idea along to me, I'll be happy to write it up and post it.
I have a few. Quickly though, to address your question to Bulia. Writing a summary about any of the new features he implemented is good, but copying from the release notes isn't the way to achieve it... that's partly due to you being able to directly link to that part of the release notes. :)
I'd say the new color modification with click-dragging is news worthy, the refinements to the gradient tool are news worthy, and honestly there is a ton of stuff that hasn't been touched on via the website. If you've followed development, I'm sure you have your own list going.
As I mentioned earlier, I plan on doing up a summary of the persistent undo work going on. Additionally, today we got official word that we will have a booth at SCaLE again this year, so I will write up an announcement on that as well.
-Josh
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
I've just reviewed website editing on the wiki - anything else I should know?
Not really. Perhaps for now, submitting news blurbs to Bryce (as he mentioned) is a good way to get rolling with it.
Sounds good.
I'd say the new color modification with click-dragging is news worthy, the refinements to the gradient tool are news worthy, and honestly there is a ton of stuff that hasn't been touched on via the website. If you've followed development, I'm sure you have your own list going.
That was what I had planned on doing first - and you're right, I do have a list of stuff from the dev list :)
Thanks!
JF
I'd say the new color modification with click-dragging is news worthy, the refinements to the gradient tool are news worthy, and honestly there is a ton of stuff that hasn't been touched on via the website. If you've followed development, I'm sure you have your own list going.
That was what I had planned on doing first - and you're right, I do have a list of stuff from the dev list :)
if you want to, feel free to use some of those new feature screencasts that i did a little while back, they are CC licensed and on blip.tv - http://ryanlerch.blip.tv/posts?view=archive
hopefully i will get a chance to do some more and update some of the ones that have had new features added (i.e the tweak tool)
cheers,
ryanlerch
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The About screen: I just want to follow up on this. I know we're most likely not ready to go for it yet (as there are a number of filter bugs remaining). But I am just wondering if we think we're getting closer. Also, did Jon Phillips want to host this via ocal or create? Or are we going deviantART again? Just want to coordinate.
We used the OCAL infrastructure for a few contests already, so it is proved and working, a solid option to consider.
"Joshua A. Andler" <joshua@...533...> writes:
Current discussion and drafts can be found at: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TutorialUpdates-0.46
Also, as for tutorial localization and to attempt simplifying our files and the process for translators, I know there was discussion in the past about po2xml. Can anyone enlighten me on if this has change has been done?
Yes, that's finished, as that website says. :)
Will there be any changes in formatting or the process for tutorial writers?
For writers, the only thing that I would ask for is what I have written on that page:
"When creating a new tutorial, remember that all original strings should form full phrases/sentences even in the illustrations. Please don't split them into several string that make up a sentence just by positioning them in order, because they need to keep the context to be translatable.
It's best to use a textarea (centered if needed) so that the text can flow into form, even when it's longer in a translation."
No changes for authors other than that.
Cheers Colin
participants (9)
-
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
Colin Marquardt -
Joshua A. Andler -
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art -
Maximilian Albert -
MenTaLguY -
Nicu Buculei -
Ryan Lerch