Subject: Re: Call for writers - help us with the user documentation
From: Jesper Skov (jskov@zoftcorp.adsl.dk)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 02:22:35 CDT
>>>>> "rms" == rms <rms@greymalkin.yi.org> writes:
rms> Terribly more important things won't make it into 1.0 because
rms> after the mythical 0.9 no new features will be added (stupid
rms> imho) because some (irresponsible perhaps?) minds want a 1.0 at
rms> all costs, but will be delayed for the sake of a small amount of
rms> documentation?
You're entitled to your opinions - just as others are. And there's
more developers in favor of getting a 1.0 done so we have a release
normal users dare use, and a stable platform for further feature
changes.
Whatever the versions are, we'll be doing something like this next:
1: Go to a new version base, beat on bugs for a while until AbiWord is
really stable.
2: Release a feature frozen version that people can use for their
editing needs. This should probably be open for critical bug
fixes, so we'll need a branch rather than just a tag as in earlier
releases.
3: Go to a new version base, do major surgery to introduce tables,
optimize backend, you name it.
1 will be usable for mortals, 2 will be even better, 3 will be for
developers only.
Now, if we make these 0.9, 0.10, and 0.11, what do you think the
chances are *users* will pick 0.10 as the natural stable version?
They'll go like cattle for 0.11 if you ask me.
On the other hand, if we do 0.9, 1.0, and 1.1, our *users* will know a
1.0 for what it is and pick that. There'll also be users to go for 1.1
obviously, but there's a precedent for versioning that suggests that
1.0 is worth using in itself. There's no such precedent for a "0.10"
release.
rms> This is not a word processor with a few thousands of features, if
rms> you get my drift. If you don't, then... Users will exhaust what
rms> they can do (in terms of features) with abiword pretty easily
rms> even without docs Users will complain of the lack of certain
rms> "critical" features that a *final* gold version of a word
rms> processor should at least have.
There's no such thing as a final version - not until the day we all
get fed up and leave the project to die. If users want all the
features they find in Word - and trust me, not all will agree with you
about what are "critical" features - they should stick to the
bloatware what Word is.
For the remaining 75% of the potential user base (my guesstimate), the
current feature set is sufficient. Should we deny them a stable
platform in order to get the GTI drivers of the wordprocessing game
all the hottest fanciest features? I think not.
That's my opinion, and I'm entitled to it... I also happen to feel
that I'm one of the core developers, maybe not feature wise, but
based on how much time I'm putting into AbiWord, so I'd assume that my
opinion carries more weight than most others.
This is democracy by doing, not by talking: I happen to believe we
need Word export, footnotes, and tables by 1.0, but I'm not able to do
any of those in the timeframe I believe is necessary for a 1.0
release, so who am I to demand those features in 1.0?
Who are you to demand them?
Respectfully but slightly annoyed,
Jesper
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