[Gambas-devel] Well, I kept my promise

Benoît Minisini gambas at ...1...
Wed Dec 9 12:07:48 CET 2009


> 2009/12/9 Benoît Minisini <gambas at ...1...>:
> >> 1) The Gambas prawn/shrimp looks really immature. I recommend a new
> >> and more technical logo, such as, erm, anything other than a prawn or
> >> shrimp.
> >
> > Mmm... Something like a foot print, a green dragon, or worse a penguin?
> > :-)
> 
> lol - the only penguin I like is the fat one with the googly eyes.
>  Attached.
> 
> > I think you don't understand the need of the wiki: I made it to allow
> > people from everywhere to *enter* the information.
> >
> > Then, I don't find that my last wiki style sheet is ugly. I find it
> > pretty nice. It is almost copied on the old wikipedia style sheet. Well,
> > it is mainly a matter of taste.
> 
> It's not just the style, Benoit. It's the lack of control and being
> tied into how the wiki expects things to be done. 

Can you be more precise?

> Why should I be
> forced to type "=TypeWriter=", requiring 12 keystrokes, when I can
> achieve exactly the same thing with a single flick of the wrist and a
> click of a mouse button?

What are you talking about? That you have to enter the pages by using the wiki 
syntax?

> 
> > If you need sort of a menu on the left page, I think it could be easily
> > added to the wiki. Like in wikipedia.
> 
> Oh, I think you misunderstand. I don't need it, nor do I "want" it. I
> just put the idea out there for discussion and suggestion. At the end
> of the day, I don't believe the over-arching design decisions should
> be mine. It was just something to generate discussion... do we need a
> side panel or not? Perhaps we do, perhaps it needs to be a frame.
> Perhaps none of those. I have no fixed ideas on how the help text
> should appear to users, with the exception that it should be clear,
> succinct, easy to find and at least somewhat pleasurable to browse.
> 
> > I don't think that *.tar.gz files can be put in the wiki, but it should
> > be a feature easy to add too.
> >
> > But if I don't find the wiki ugly, I admit it is a bit arcane.
> 
> lol - you just reminded me of a cartoon I saw many years ago. There
> was a skinflint king who needed a new chef but the king was worried
> that the chefs he'd interviewed would taste the food too much, thereby
> costing him too much money. Some guy with a face like a Grouch Marx
> mask turned up. He had blue and red striped trousers, a gaudy green
> jacket, one hobnail boot on one foot and a sandal on the other. The
> king hired him...
> 
> Because the guy's taste was up his arse.
> 
> Let me know if I need to explain it to you.
> 
> Ok, you like the wiki, but you are better at writing interpreters and
> compilers than I am. You do the interpreters and compilers and I'll do
> the writing.
> 

What is the point with writing *inside* the wiki?

> > The main reason is: the information is usually entered in one place only,
> > and follow the component structure (component->class->symbol).
> 
> The component structure is part of the problem. Human brains are not
> organised in a component->class->symbol structure.
> 
> > This way, a contextual help can be easily implemented in the IDE. But for
> > beginners, I admit that it is difficult to find the information needed to
> > do a specific task.
> 
> I'm far from a beginner in terms of being a developer and I can't use
> the documentation. That said, if contextual help is a requirement of
> yours that you'd like to see implemented then I'm happy to include
> whatever hooks you need. Just specify them.
> 
> > The solution there is writing the same information, but with a better
> > organization. But it couldn't be done before that information was written
> > first, and I have never had the time to do that myself.
> 
> I'm happy to do that too, Benoit, but I need artistic license to do it
> the way your users want it done, which is not necessarily the way
> that's convenient for you.
> 
> There's a very important point hidden in there. Gambas is maturing;
> it's certainly come a very long way since I first saw it in v1. The
> point? Your user base is also maturing and it is demanding something
> of you that you can't reasonably provide on your own, that being help
> text and documentation that is a pleasure to read. That isn't a
> criticism, by the way; it says far more about the fruits of your own
> and your core team's extraordinary efforts to build a brilliant BASIC
> tool with GUI support and an IDE to boot.
> 
> > And finally if you need an offline documentation, we can imagine a
> > periodic process of dumping the wiki inside a directory, as I did before
> > for Gambas 2.
> 
> Let me ask you a serious question. In the last 12 months, how much
> editing of the wiki has been done by Gambas users who are not part of
> the core development team?
> 
> If the answer is not a substantial amount then all the reasons you
> just put forward for using the wiki are made void and the only real
> conclusion is that the wiki helps you save time, nothing else.
> 

I have written most of the english part of the wiki, but I didn't write the 
french, spanish, chinese, farsi... parts.

And if the only benefit of the wiki would be saving me time, it would be 
enough. Even if I don't see how it could save me time. The only way to save my 
time is *not* writing any documentation.

> > In short, I don't see in your example anything that cannot be done inside
> > the wiki with a few modifications.
> >
> > But I may be wrong.
> 
> I genuinely believe that this is not a case of someone being right and
> someone being wrong. From what you've said, I get the impression that
> the wiki gives you, that is you, yourself, a lot of benefits, which
> means the wiki is right for you. However, speaking as a developer, the
> wiki is terrible, and speaking as a writer, it is even worse.
> 

Please give concrete explanations of what is bad / worse / ugly. A lot of 
people have no problems with writings things in Wikipedia, so I don't see the 
point with writing things in the Gambas wiki.

Regards,

-- 
Benoît Minisini




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