Subject: Re: PATCH (4): Insert Symbol again.
From: John Tunison (nosinut@WIND.REM.CMU.EDU)
Date: Mon Apr 10 2000 - 14:25:30 CDT
> I only have one major concern. What is our plan for keeping equivalent
> functionality on Linux vs. Windows? As Shaw and I prepare for AbiWord
> 0.7.9 within the next week or two, I need to make sure we don't release
> anything with such a huge feature mis-match. In the past, AbiWord releases
> have always had the same functionality regardless of OS, and I don't want
> to break this tradition. Also, on this particular dialog, I am guessing
> the amount of shared code will be much less then usual.
Hi Robert,
Let me water down this comment with a disclaimer: I just started writing
code for Abiword and I don't know any of the details about this patch. So
consider this the long-winded twittering of the peanut gallery.
PLEASE, please, please: don't instantiate a "tradition" like this. One
of the things I love about Abiword is that is cross-platform--this means
that one day I can look forward to telling my parents, "Use Linux
instead." ("Will we have the same programs?" "Yes, Abiword, just like in
Windows.")
But don't let the goal of a cross-platform application reduce Abiword to
the lowest common denominator when it comes to getting code in the
tree. This is not a good way to run an open-source application: people
will code parts of the tree that they are most interested in. If this
means that the Gnome implementation is more full-featured than the Windows
implementation, great! This tells us that we've captured that many more
developer eyeballs that we would not otherwise have.
So: please don't slow development of one platform for the sake of keeping
all platforms in sync. This does not mesh well with the chaotic world of
open source. Put stubs in the Windows version so that it
compiles. Encourage your Windows developer friends to put time into the
Windows code. Force people to make as much of their code xp as possible,
in order to ease the implementation on Windows.
But holding back Linux to achieve parity will just slow the entire project
down. Rather than encouraging Windows development, it will tend to
discourage Linux development. :/
--John
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