Joined: Jun 23, 2003 Posts: 36 Location: Seward, Alaska, USA
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 10:45 am Post subject: Proposal to re-organize project
The NeoOffice project and, indeed, the OOoMac porting effort has gained much new attention in the last months. I think it's time for the project to get properly organized and move away from the up-to-now rather chaotic scene. Time for an independent users group? sparked this idea off. I think that all of the resources for organization are in place, if scattered and currently a little haphazard. I'd like to see a few changes to make life easier on the devs.
My proposed changes:
1. User Support
Neo/J has become stable for use in a production environment, IMNSHO. Move user support to the already existing forums at OOoDocs and OOoFurums.
2. Developer Support
Set up a mailing list (Mailman or whatever) for developers/testers with public archives hosted either from the main OOo system. New release announcement can be made through the established OOo.announce lists.
3. Source Availability
Establish a publicly available versioning system, such as CVS. Easy availability of current code, patches and branched sources should help new developers get involved. Currently available tar archives are somewhat outdated from current testing code and it may be difficult for potential developers to know what has been changed where.
Ideally, Neo and Neo/J can be established within the main OOo CVS as branched code bases.
4. Issue Tracking
There's a nice bugzilla set up, but it seems too many issues are being tracked solely in the forums. This is chaotic and unenlightening for the developers. If it's not in bugzilla, don't implement it unless it's really severe and then add it to the issue tracker yourself.
Also, it's not tied in with main-branch OOo. Merge the issue tracking into the main issuezilla as a branch and work from there. This allows for better search availability and less duplicated effort. If main-branch solves a bug that works in Neo/J, then use their fix. Likewise a Neo/J solution could conceivably be useful to the main-branch coders.
5. Wiki
Open the wiki to the whole of the OOo community. Encourage it's use as an online user-level knowledge base and/or handbook. It could be most useful as an online handbook and FAQ in similar vein to the FreeBSD Handbook or KDE documentation sites. I have noticed that online documentation for OOo, in general, is severely lacking.
If OOo main-branch community will not host items 2 - 4, continue using Trinity, but definitely attempt to get them hosted within the main OOo hierarchy since it benefits everyone. Ideally, Trinity is left as an information web site and/or distribution point for Neo and Neo/J with OOo handling all development and support cruft.
In short, it's time for NeoOffice and NeoOffice/J to re-enter the OOo community-at-large and make better use of their resources while giving back what could possibly be useful to them, at the same time. _________________ Faster than a speeding slug!
I'm Paraplegic Racehorse.
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 3:05 pm Post subject: Re: Proposal to re-organize project
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
In short, it's time for NeoOffice and NeoOffice/J to re-enter the OOo community-at-large and make better use of their resources while giving back what could possibly be useful to them, at the same time.
While I admire your spirit, I doubt this will find much enthousiasm in the OO.org community. Check out some of the posts at the dev@porting e-mail list to see how some people are viewing the use of mainstream OO.org resources for NeoOffice/J.
The branching system in particular might be hard. As for bugtracking, the specifically NeoOffice/J code does not exist in the main branch (which doesn't even use Java) and vice versa. So I doubt there will be a lot of overlap.
Occasionally, a bug will be placed in the NeoOffice/J that should be counted towards OpenOffice.org, or the other way around, and it might be beneficial to point these to the proper location within the same system. But again, this depends on Patrick and Ed's willingness to work with Issuezilla and the willingness of OO.org to open the database NeoOffice/J.
On the whole, I agree with that NeoOffice could get some more attention (and praise) but I wonder if your proposal works for The Powers That Be.
As for the Wiki, I would like for all of the OpenOffice/NeoOffice manual to be on a Wiki (and coded into the build from there) rather than in the CVS because it is not really clear at the moment. On other hand, the Help file has been translated into many languages by now and a Wiki would seriously break language comparability...
Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:30 am Post subject: Re: Proposal to re-organize project
In general my response/feeling mirrors Oscar's; the ideas are good but there are still a few too many logjams to be cleared....
I also have some specific (and long-winded ) not-so-humble opinions/comments on your suggestions
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
1. User Support
Neo/J has become stable for use in a production environment, IMNSHO. Move user support to the already existing forums at OOoDocs and OOoFurums.
First off, OOoDocs is all but dead in my perception. Terry Teague used to visit the Mac OS X Testing forum there about once a week and handle Mac questions, but it doesn't look like he's been by lately; I used to try to visit "regularly" also but its lack of use (and my time constraints) led it to fall off my list. I wouldn't recommend directing anyone there at all; indeed, posting a pointer in the OOoDocs Mac section to the Trinity fora, and in other sections to OOoForums, will probably better serve anyone who goes to OOoDocs--much larger and more active user communities in the Trinity fora and OOoForums. (In case it is ever needed for a backup and because it is a repository of "critical" historical info from the early days of the Mac port are the only reasons I have for not shutting it down--not that it's ours to shut down of course). Less duplication of effort/division of precious resources.
Secondly, though, I think it's important that we keep the "Support" fora here at Trinity for several reasons, even though it in some ways would be a division of precious resources.
• First, at least in terms of Neo/J, the product, while being more-or-less stable for a production environment, is not yet on par feature-wise with the other platforms. Drag-and-drop within Neo/J is one thing I can think of right away (for OOo/Mac in general there are also things like sound support yet to be implemented; I'm not sure what other OOo features are also missing.) Until "we" reach feature parity (at least 1.1 Beta), it's not good IMHO to be sending "our" users off to other fora, where they might report a (Neo/J-specific) problem/missing feature and others could reply, "Sorry, you're using a crappy/incomplete version; tough luck!" It's also not good for NeoJ's long-term reputation (like why the Aqua menus patch is hidden in the Trinity Testing forum and not announced publicly to the world...it's still buggy).
• Second, and related to the first, is that it's sometimes hard to tell what is a "Neo/J- or Mac-specific problem" and what is a general OOo use issue or bug (especially for new users!). See, for instance, More grief with styles, which hits on the drag-drop issue. I/O and printing issues are also likely to be Mac-specific and I doubt there are enough Mac folks on OOoForums that these sorts of questions would get answered there. That's not to say that we shouldn't try to encourage general OOo-specific questions and inquirees to go to OOoForums when relevant, etc.
• Third, for better or for worse, the Trinity fora are the Mac OOo user community (and I'm including Neo/J as part of this), at least as far as I know. (The only other place with a big Mac "community" is dev@porting and that's really devs, as far as I can tell). We need a gathering-place for a Mac OOo community, whether X11 or Neo/J, and Trinity and its fora are an established home for it. I think it helps that not only are there OOo and Neo/J support fora but also the development and testing fora, too. The Trinity fora really are the centralized place for "Mac OOo users" (as well as testers and devs--the entire Mac OOo world). As a very small part of the wider OOo world, Mac users (and Neo/J users in particular) need a good place for a strong community...and right now it's pretty clear that's not going to happen on any official OOo site....
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
2. Developer Support
Set up a mailing list (Mailman or whatever) for developers/testers with public archives hosted either from the main OOo system. New release announcement can be made through the established OOo.announce lists.
For the first part of this, I'm not sure how that's a better solution than the existing fora devoted to the subject I think I heard that at one time Ed had lists like this set up for Neo dev/testing...but we all seem to be in the fora (well, and Neo is in hibernation )
As for the second, official OOo "support" for Neo/J using OOo mechanisms looks unlikely. Patrick does have a mailing-list for release/patch announcements, though.
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
3. Source Availability
Establish a publicly available versioning system, such as CVS. Currently available tar archives are somewhat outdated from current testing code and it may be difficult for potential developers to know what has been changed where.
Ideally, Neo and Neo/J can be established within the main OOo CVS as branched code bases.
This exists. Patrick has a nice page of instructions for getting, building, and packaging Neo/J. Perhaps it needs to be promoted more? I don't know that the patches are that far outdated (although I would be expecting a new one soon, but I'm guessing there are a couple big open bugs Patrick-Ed want to fix first)--but then I'll test but I'd never want to build the behemoth that is OOo . For the second part, we run up against hostile camps at OOo again
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
4. Issue Tracking
There's a nice bugzilla set up, but it seems too many issues are being tracked solely in the forums. This is chaotic and unenlightening for the developers. If it's not in bugzilla, don't implement it unless it's really severe and then add it to the issue tracker yourself.
Also, it's not tied in with main-branch OOo. Merge the issue tracking into the main issuezilla as a branch and work from there. This allows for better search availability and less duplicated effort. If main-branch solves a bug that works in Neo/J, then use their fix. Likewise a Neo/J solution could conceivably be useful to the main-branch coders.
You're spot-on on this one. We (and here I mean "senior" forum members/testers) need to encourage newer folks to put things in bugzilla (like how some the Camino devs and QA folks do in the Camino MozillaZine forum, for instance).
Sometimes there will be situations where someone wants to know whether something's a (reproducible) issue rather than an OOo feature [before reporting], and I think a post or two about it is OK and helps keep Bugzilla free of non-bugs and OOo bugs (saves Patrick some time), but once it's clear it is a bug, we need to point the poster to the NeoBugzilla or OOo IssueZilla, as appropriate, so that the bug gets filed.
There's a learning curve to all of this, esp. if someone's new to FOSS. Even simple bugzillas can seem daunting. Fora are common, familiar places of entry for users with problems/bug reports. As long as we guide them along the process of reporting bugs and the general learning curve, I don't see a problem with discussing bugs in the fora.
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
5. Wiki
Open the wiki to the whole of the OOo community. Encourage it's use as an online user-level knowledge base and/or handbook.
I'd really like to see the wiki "more integrated" with the resources at Trinity--or at least with www.neooffice.org and www.planamesa.com/neojava/. By that I mean a more similar look, if possible, and better linkages/promotion. (On the other hand, Trinity being News and FAQs and Fora--the middle one not very clearly--may already be confusing enough.) Otherwise it's duplicated effort that could be spent elsewhere. At the moment, I also think our wiki is best dedicated to Mac OOo and Neo; there are a lot of OOo FAQs at/linked to by OOo--the first one is quite good--for general OOo things, though not wikis. I agree with the need for some sort of user-editible OOo FAQ via wiki, but--our need and desire to remain involved with the larger OOo world notwithstanding--we need to take care of ourselves first with our limited resources. There are lots of other people/places that can take the lead on a general OOo thing....
(Edit: oops, there's an entire user-faqs project at OOo; we can and should contribute Mac content there.)
Paraplegic_Racehorse wrote:
If OOo main-branch community will not host items 2 - 4, continue using Trinity, but definitely attempt to get them hosted within the main OOo hierarchy since it benefits everyone. Ideally, Trinity is left as an information web site and/or distribution point for Neo and Neo/J with OOo handling all development and support cruft.
In short, it's time for NeoOffice and NeoOffice/J to re-enter the OOo community-at-large and make better use of their resources while giving back what could possibly be useful to them, at the same time.
These are important (long-term) goals and tasks, but I'm afraid the short-term reality (and the larger OOo position towards Mac OOo in general and Neo/J in particular) makes them unlikely at the moment. While we keep trying to improve the OOo-Mac OOo relationship and interaction, we need to press on with a Trinity-centered Mac community, fix and streamline what items we can (bugs-not-in-bugzilla and general-OOo-program-usage support pointers to OOoForums), and build content we can hopefully contribute to OOo-wide resources in the future....
Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:11 am Post subject: Re: Proposal to re-organize project
sardisson wrote:
First off, OOoDocs is all but dead in my perception. Terry Teague used to visit the Mac OS X Testing forum there about once a week and handle Mac questions, but it doesn't look like he's been by lately; I used to try to visit "regularly" also but its lack of use (and my time constraints) led it to fall off my list.
Smokey
I just wanted to correct your perception. I still visit OOoDocs and Trinity every day (and sometimes several times a day). I try to answer any OOo for Mac OS X questions posed. Any apparent lack of activity is probably because there have been no new questions recently; I sometimes refuse to answer complaints that are content-free of information (quite often I have to guess the user is even using Mac OS X); perhaps there was a recent loss of data on OOoDocs, as when I visited tonight, it seems there have been no new questions for about a week, but I thought I had answered something recently (perhaps reality is my week has sped by).
I don't visit OOoForum very often, as I found it hard to find Mac OS X specific questions, without spending a lot of time.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled discussion
Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:59 am Post subject: Re: Proposal to re-organize project
Terry Teague wrote:
I just wanted to correct your perception. I still visit OOoDocs and Trinity every day (and sometimes several times a day). I try to answer any OOo for Mac OS X questions posed. Any apparent lack of activity is probably because there have been no new questions recently
Thanks for the correction, Terry. Good to know you're still covering that "beat"
Like I said, I'm not at OOoDocs enough anymore to judge adequately, but the impression of general inactivity (of the whole set of fora, not just the Mac OS X Testing one--based on an admittedly quick scan of "last post" dates, unanswered posts, outdated/broken poll) still leads me to argue that users would be better off directed to OOoForums for general OOo questions and to Trinity for Mac-specific ones...especially if we want to emphasize the Mac-community-building Well, I've just repeated what I said in my previous post
Terry Teague wrote:
I don't visit OOoForum very often, as I found it hard to find Mac OS X specific questions, without spending a lot of time.
There's a NeoJ user named Sue who frequents OOoForums and she dropped in on one of the threads here at Trinity not too long ago and mentioned that she redirects a bunch of Mac OOo questions to Trinity (And I think the last time I went to OOoForums, there was a sticky or something similar saying something along the lines of "we don't do Mac support; go to Trinity "). So hopefully Mac users going there are "covered" for their Mac-specific issues.
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) not-so-humble opinions/comments on your suggestions 
I think I heard that at one time Ed had lists like this set up for Neo dev/testing...but we all seem to be in the fora (well, and Neo is in hibernation 
"). So hopefully Mac users going there are "covered" for their Mac-specific issues.