[Pan-users] Re: Get that edit window out of my way!

[Duncan]

"Lionel B" <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:10:07
+0000:

>> The undo/redo would indeed be /very/ nice.  However, I doubt it'll make
>> it before 1.0 at this point as it'd be a new feature, possibly coming
>> complete with implementation bugs, and we are too close to 1.0 for
>> that. Afterward, maybe.  If you haven't, please check bugzy and file
>> one on this if it hasn't been requested yet, so the request isn't lost.
>>  If you post the number or bug URL here, I'll second it. =8^)
> 
> There is a rather ancient enhancement request
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99810 from 2002, ver 0.13.0.
> Should this be re-requested for the rewrite?

Well, it says enhancement, target bluesky, so the request is still there,
but bluesky roughly means "it'd be nice, but it's not something I'm
planning any time soon" (xref the I believe USianism, "pie-in-the-sky").
Of course, that was back then... at which point the automated multi-server
handling we have now could have qualified as "bluesky" as well.  Thus,
current status would be uncertain.

What' I'd suggest is wait until Charles adds a post-1.0 or pre-1.1 (or
whatever) target, then clone the old bug so it's immediately clear what's
going on and set the target appropriately.  In the meantime, you could add
a comment to the old bug (therefore effectively voting for it), suggesting
that the feature be reexamined for inclusion in 1.1.  If Charles still
considers it bluesky, he can reply to that effect on the old bug and/or
simply mark the clone as a duplicate.  (While some devs practically demand
thorough pre-filing searches for dups, Gentoo my distribution comes to
mind, Charles has specifically stated better two bugs than no bug, and
he'd rather have it filed even if he ends up marking duplicate, than not
filing because you  might have missed a dup, so he's not as negative on
them as some.)

Do note three things:

1)  There have been quite a few things put off until post-1.0.  I don't
believe even Charles has worried much if at all about which of those might
be appropriate pre-1.1 targets, but it's obvious not all will make it. Get
a lot of others commenting on the bug for a feature and/or agreeing with a
high priority on this list, and your chances will of course go up, but
there will necessarily be a lot of folks disappointed that their request
didn't make 1.1 either.

2)  After 1.0 and any immediately necessary 1.0.x stable series bugfixes,
Charles has indicated he'll take a bit of a breather.  That's
understandable as this once a week beta pace is simply too much for a
single primary dev to continue indefinitely.  He has mentioned he didn't
expect the push to 1.0 to be this long, and I'm not sure he would have set
himself the weekly beta goal if he'd have realized it'd be seven months'
worth (from April 1).  Anyway, I'm expecting after a bit of a breather,
maybe something like monthly or biweekly betas might be more the norm.  I
also expect (hope) that he'll decide to release stable versions fairly
frequently, perhaps targeted every 90-180 days at the slower beta rate,
but with only one major and/or several minor features added each stable
release.  If that happens, 1.1 will be reasonably soon, but only
incrementally improved, with most of the wishlist not yet included.  If he
goes for less frequent but larger stable update targets, expect six-month
to annual stables.

3)  Charles has pointedly hinted a couple times that he (well, he says
Mrs. Kerr, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind either) wouldn't mind a bit more
in that tip-jar.  I've no inside track here, certainly, but I can well
imagine her wondering why he sinks so much time into the thing, when he
had a sum total of less than $100 from the tip-jar, sum-total, after all
these years (the figure I remember a couple years ago, before the rewrite,
was something like $32 total, then).  She will understand that it has been
a personal goal of his to see pan reach 1.0, and could hardly begrudge him
that, but I can imagine some sort of negotiation taking place whereby he
agreed to spend a bit less of his free time on pan, and a bit more on
family, if /something/ didn't happen within a reasonable period after 1.0.
This is NOT intended as pressure of any sort and it's certainly a highly
personal decision (note that I'm very pointedly not mentioning what I
personally might choose to do, it's not about that), but realistically,
after sinking the time into pan that Charles has, how motivated would
/you/ be to continue prioritizing it, with numbers south of $100 total.
(Again, I'm not sure of that currently, but extrapolating from the IIRC $32
back then, and the fact that during the rewrite, Charles pretty much
dropped off the map for a couple years, $100 should still be reasonably
safe, at least up to the "Mrs. Kerr says" release a couple weeks ago, and
I wouldn't have expected it to change much then, even if there are
many thinking about it, with 1.0 coming soon.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman