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NeoOffice :: View topic - update?
update?
 
   NeoOffice Forum Index -> NeoOffice/C Development
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jakeOSX
Ninja
Ninja


Joined: Aug 12, 2003
Posts: 1373

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 8:25 am    Post subject: update?

it's been quite in this part of the board, I was just curious if there were any updates.

-j
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schlesi
Oracle


Joined: Jun 07, 2003
Posts: 234
Location: near Cologne, Germany

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 1:19 pm    Post subject:

Jacob,

the last update of source code was on Jan, 13th.

Dan is doing this things next:

- searching and eleminating memory leaks
- speedup the event handling
- clean up the menu stuff a bit more
- try to find the place where VirDevs get flipped around
- ATSUI layout code bug hunting and further implementation

I'm waiting impatiently for new code, too Wink

Thomas
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fred78
Agent


Joined: Sep 25, 2003
Posts: 13

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 5:14 pm    Post subject:

And what about Ed?

Fred
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schlesi
Oracle


Joined: Jun 07, 2003
Posts: 234
Location: near Cologne, Germany

PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 10:35 am    Post subject:

I don't know, what Ed is doing. And I also don't know, how we could get more developers for NeoOffice Crying or Very sad

Thomas
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 8:35 pm    Post subject:

Ed's been busy swearing at the !@#$!@ configuration stuff in 1.1 and debugging Bitmap in NeoJ and hasn't had enough time to look at Neo yet this year. Well, not directly...

I've been investigating how we can add a grammar checker into it Smile

As to getting more developers, it's really a conundrum for me. I spent two years evangalizing OOo proper and no one showed up Sad Anything I could do better? I'm open to feedback, especially as I no longer have enough dough to pay my way to multiple conferences a year.

ed
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schlesi
Oracle


Joined: Jun 07, 2003
Posts: 234
Location: near Cologne, Germany

PostPosted: Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:58 am    Post subject:

Ed,

I have one suggestion: keep the site http://www.neooffice.org/building_neooffice.html more up-to-date (or set a link to the NeoWiki).

A visitor of this site, who doesn't know this forum, would try the build instructions and would fail. I think, it's important, to give may-be-developers a first success experience, so he can see, that the project is living and not another corpse in web.

And put more news about NeoOffice on http://www.neooffice.org/index.html. The latest news about NeoOffice are from July 2003. Tell the people periodically, what you and Dan are doing/have done on the code. Show, that there's live on NeoOffice!

Yes, the people could look in the Trinity-BBS, but the first eye-catcher ist www.neooffice.org.

And put some screenshots on your website. We have a proverb for that in Germany: the eyes joins eating. It's true. Eyecandy matters!

Check, if there are people subscribed to the mailing lists. If so, put life in it. If there's no traffic in a subscribed mailing list, I would think, the project is dead.

You mustn't do all of that by yourself. Set up a CMS and give some of us authoring access. So some of the non-developers, like me, could write short articles to keep neooffice.org more up-to-date. The NeoWiki is an attempt to provide more up-to-date informations. To put some them directly on neooffice.org, would be better, of course.

Just my $0.02 Wink

Thomas
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jakeOSX
Ninja
Ninja


Joined: Aug 12, 2003
Posts: 1373

PostPosted: Sat Feb 21, 2004 6:49 am    Post subject:

Ed,

We could look into make a slash-type front page for NeoOffice.org so that you could post news and stuff (and have it linked to the trinity forums)

the front page is partially my fault, i asked to re-do it, Ed said sure... and well, life got in the way. But I still have a half-completed rework of the site. so i'll get around to finishing that.

I agree about the screen shots.

If you think we could take the abuse Very Happy we could write up an article for MacSlash (i'd advoid slashdot just yet...) and see if we could attract developers.

i agree about using the wiki to help keep things current. i never understood why most projects separate the wiki from everything else. it should be integrated into the site for the parts that are changing.

and i don't like the word 'wiki'

Once upon a time, Ed, you published a short list of projects for developers, kinda to-do list for someone to step up and work on. That was a great idea. do it again. =)

i don't like blogs (or the word blog) but they work. look at the KOffice guys...

and always eat your wheates.

-jacob
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fred78
Agent


Joined: Sep 25, 2003
Posts: 13

PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:55 am    Post subject:

I am not a mac user myself but am interrested in the mac port of OOo (wich is an important OOo issue according to me).

I often read the french macgeneration.com french site and give them news about OOo/Neo(J). Here is the feeling I ve from users comments :
Each time an article talks about MSOffice, several users say "use OOo(X11) instead".

- Many mac users say OOo for mac (I mean with Aqua interface) is an "Arlésienne" (in french, means something everybody taks about but no one has never seen and will ever see).
- More and more people use OOo(X11) 1.03 and 1.1 versions but it's seen as a geek stuff.
- NeoJ would be a good temporary solution if it was released soon (still seen as a developper stuff).

The problem of the mac desktop is that there are quite few developpers and users are expecting for very high interface levels. I also thing that some would be ready to pay if they saw the things in progress and the goal approaching.

Of course Everybody love screenshots and fresh ones would be greatly appreciated by user and potential developpers (I could find none of the 1.1 codebase NeoOffice).

Fred.
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:23 pm    Post subject:

Yeah, these are all great suggestions. The websites, both OOo and Neo, do tend to be out of date and aren't 'flashy' in terms of end-users. I do have to agree with the vaporware criticisms, but then again, we just haven't had the kind of manpower to be able to push this thing forward Sad

The project suffers from a very gnarly technical problem...we actually don't need "Mac" developers. "Mac" developers tend to want to do things the Apple way, either in pure Carbon with resource files or Cocoa with nibs and Objective C++. OpenOffice.org and Neo (by extension) are like the farthest thing from Mac programming. It thrusts programmers into a world where they need to know hardcore Unix programming, be comfortable with command line (e.g. non-Apple non-Metrowerks) build tools and debugging. It's not "Mac" programming, but more like programming for Unix geeks that switch over to Mac.

Don't get me wrong, the KOffice guys are great and all, but they're Qt programmers...they're not "Mac" programmers. OOo is at a disadvantage as we need to port the underlying widget set, whereas KOffice has the benefit of having a fully-funded company (Trolltech) doing their widget port for them (Qt). Qt was ported to the mac by trolltech, and KOffice is just a side-effect.

In some respects, it's a tradeoff...Sun is pushing StarOffice and OOo to be more competitive from a feature standpoint. KOffice isn't nearly as functional yet, but definitely has been pushed to be more cross platform then OOo.

It still doesn't help answer the question of how to find more "Unix" developers on OS X to push progress along. We haven't done screenshots and progress updates since, well, there's not been much to report. Even if we have a wonderful professional style of presentation, it won't change the fact that we still only have two part time core developers who are limited to putting in only as much time as they can.

I admit, personally there was a time when I thought I could change the world through OOo. I was unable to find the help I needed to get it done Sad Really, even to do continual maintenance of OOo X11 is nearly a full time job. It's hard to find people to be that dedicated to volunteer in the lnog term. That's what I'm up against. After all of the time and money I put into doing so, we really only found one person...Dan. Only a couple of people are just not enough to get this done.

This project needs specialized skills, a lot of development time, and a long-term committment. Unfortunately, those are three things that are hard to come by from volunteers.

Everyone wants to use it, but no one seems to be willing to step up the plate and help develop it. FOSS software doesn't come for free...people do make sacrifices of time and personal lives to write it. Unfortunately, there's only so much one can give up for something that has no reward.

This is a project everyone wants to use, everyone wants to succeed, and with two years of experience searching for help, apparently no one wants to volunteer to help develop after getting to know the code. Without more development volunteers, the project will just get done when it gets done. I wish I had insight as how to get them. Between that "volunteer" requirement and the Sun JCA requirement most developers seem to be utterly turned off. Using GPL hasn't helped either. I guess the code is just too ugly for sane people to want to touch with a 10 foot pole Sad

ed
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 4:44 pm    Post subject:

Oh yeah, not to mention the two weeks of time I had to spend dealing with the damn hackers here on trinity. Nothing like trying to do good in this world and having people needlessly attack you to dampen one's spirits Evil or Very Mad I had to do a lot of soulsearching even to bother keeping my servers online.

ed
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schlesi
Oracle


Joined: Jun 07, 2003
Posts: 234
Location: near Cologne, Germany

PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:09 am    Post subject:

Ed,

I've put a posting on Gentoo's "Off the wall" forum for searching developers (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=891211#891211). May be we could find there guys with the right experience.

Into which other forums/newgroups a posting would make sense?

Thomas
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 2:28 am    Post subject:

I'm not sure which forums make sense. Most of the places I've tried to recruit have been Mac developer forums, and generally the response has been muted after folks find out it doesn't use interface builder. Gentoo is probably a good place. I'm not sure where Unix converts or Linux programming geeks with powerbooks hang out. I should ask Kevin Smile

ed
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fred78
Agent


Joined: Sep 25, 2003
Posts: 13

PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 3:45 am    Post subject:

I have no mac and I just know VBA (some OpenOffice Basic) and Pascal. I am trying to learn C++ but still can't understand OOo's code... I am afraid I'm not very usefull as a developper.

But I can be a information relay and can search for developpers here in France. To to so, and to have a chance to meet success, I need some information, and some screenshots (others than Ed could make them). May I ask you several things about the project?

Do you think a financial support could be usefull?

Fred
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 10:57 am    Post subject:

fred78 wrote:
May I ask you several things about the project?


Feel free to ask whatever questions you'd like to ask or relay any that you may receive. My French is rusty, but unfortunately I never learned technical vocabulary in French. My head is filled with mostly useless words like "aubergine".

We definitely had interest at the Paris Apple Expo last time the OOo people were there, but I was under the impression that it was mostly an end-user show...e.g. didn't reach too many developers. I had been focusing mostly on WWDC and MacOSXCon, the two big ones I know of. I've been unable to fund my way to MacHack, particularly last year with the scheduling overlap snafus. Are there any equivalents to MacHack in France?

We were working with a team in France a while back and I put up some design documents to explore:

http://www.dashboardbuddha.com/OOo/specs/index.html

I spent nearly an entire month writing those up as well as two other projects (I guess I could move the Panther ones out into the open now...) and got feedback from some folks on them, but unfortunately no developers seemed to have picked them up.

Quote:

Do you think a financial support could be usefull?


I keep going back and forth on that...I know I won't personally accept financial contributions for tax purposes and also that I'm volunteering personally, not as an incorporated entity. While I like the project, I don't like it enough to open myself up to a boatload of legal liability.

I was thinking for a while of organizing a non-profit, but helping to coordinate funding donations, allocate them, and distribute them to developers (OOo & Neo) would be a full time job or a part time job. I also think I'd need to pay minimum capitalization requirements. And since most interest comes from outside the US, we'd have to worry about international non-profit rules and the like. I just didn't have the time to deal with all of that.

ed
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Paraplegic_Racehorse
Pure-blooded Human


Joined: Jun 23, 2003
Posts: 36
Location: Seward, Alaska, USA

PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 2:00 pm    Post subject: recruiting

Maybe there can be some help from the LinuxPPC, FreeBSD/NetBSD Mac or even the Darwin port projects?

What about requesting a capsule review from a major print publication (MacWorld or MacAddict)?

_________________
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I'm Paraplegic Racehorse.
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