Subject: RE: Topic: Tables and 1.0
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Fri May 04 2001 - 15:07:13 CDT
At 01:53 PM 5/4/01 +0200, Joaquin Cuenca Abela wrote:
>I think that our concepts of "Just Works" are quite different. I think
>that your "Just Works" is == to my "Perfect".
:-) Nah, it's not perfect. However, it's *at least* as good as the best
available alternative. :-)
>Should we revert the lists support because there are still some
>exporters than don't support it?
>
>Should we throw the insert dialog to the trash can because it doesn't
>support unicode stuff?
>
>Should we erase the emacs bindings because they are not complete?
>(Alt-F brings the File menu, don't moves the cursor forward a word)
>
>And so on, so on...
These are three excellent examples of the kinds of things which are driving
my desire to identify maintainers and checkers for the various UI and
feature matrices:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/May/0263.html
It's one thing to make a release where we say to the world:
The following stuff *does* Just Work. Those cells are green.
What? You really want feature XYZ? Well, we know that feature XYZ
doesn't Just Work, because the following cells still aren't green. If
that's not a problem for you, cool. If it is a problem for you, then
contact the maintainer for that feature and let them know what you can do
to help.
Once we've got that system in place, we can just walk over the matrix and
ask ourselves -- how much does it bother us that this swath of cells needs
work? Is it something we're prepared to fix, or are we OK releasing without
it?
The situation I most want to avoid is releasing a product to people where:
- some stuff really does Just Work,
- some stuff comes tantalizingly close, and
- other stuff only half-works.
Talk about unpleasant surprises!
The only way that kind of release could ever be acceptable to me personally
is if we collectively stand up and admit that some of our stuff, in fact,
does *not* Just Work, but we think that, overall, it's worth releasing
anyway.
Paul
PS: We're really off-topic for this thread now, right?
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