Re: [E-devel] E17's Direction and Development

[Carsten H. (T. R. <ra...@ra...>]

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:09:17 -0400 "Hisham Mardam Bey"
<his...@gm...> babbled:

> Hello gang,
> 
> I'm sure some of you have (passively) read some of the discussions
> that are occurring on #edevelop from time to time regarding the
> direction this project is taking. I am mainly talking about E17, the
> window manager, and not the entire EFL.
> 
> The main discussion was centered about how we're developing E17 and
> where its going. We now have two places where we keep TODO items and
> bugs, the TODO file in apps/e, and bugzilla. The way things are going,
> we have several "open" features in E17 that are partially done, some
> major, some minor. Among those features are EFM, and the First Time
> Run Wizard (FTRW).

i think i did warn people that if this is moved to bugzilla i am certain i will
probably not read it - having a web browser up consuming half my screen and a
web interface to trawl through painfully just to check what people have filed is
a sure way to make me avoid it. bugzilla is painful. compared to the compact
simplicity of a TODO file in CVS - it's an abomination (from a developers point
of view). a lot of you may just love the web, and web ui's, and sit and drool
over your gmail web page etc. etc. - but i do not. i find it royally painful.
so as i said - the result is me not reading the bug reports/feature requests.

> EFM was supposed to be a simple file selector, it then grew into a

actually no - it was meant to be BOTH a file selector back-end AND a simple
filemanager. there is no point making 2 of them separate. they do the same
thing. list files.

> file manager, it then started getting custom directory and window
> configuration abilities, and then grew so big it needed its own

config has been there from day 0 so it can look like a list (used int he file
selector) or icons (desktop bg/fwin views). config is there as simple twiddle
knobs for icon size and more.

> process. As it stands, none of its features are 100% complete and

no - the process was there to split file IO out ot a slave so the WM doesn't
hang doing file IO to slow file systems (eg AFS, a CF/SD card plugged in via a
USB 1 card reader etc.). i actually did this because of slowness in the file
selector - not the file manager. it has a bonus of making the file manager
better too.

> almost without bugs, except the file selector. The file selector is a
> core part of E17 (for obvious reasons), but the file manager is really
> not. I would classify it as a nice to have feature, along with desktop
> icons, but its nothing major that can prevent a release from
> happening.

there's a bunch of things to finish off with the fm - but it's not a huge
amount of work to finish ti to simple usability. it's almost there. just the
actual file operations need fixing to work properly in all cases and report
errors properly. that's about all that's really left to do here (other than
initial setup of Desktop so u have some links to places like your homedir). i
wanted to add links to the ~/.e/e/themes, backgrounds etc. dirs for trivial DND
of downloaded items etc. the FM allows that and it's ALMOST there.

> The FTRW is a useful feature to have that has also been started and

the wizard core is pretty much done - i paused to go fix the default theme ans
i frankly was disgusted with the look of the wizard and couldn't continue until
i fixed things. i wanted to get that settled and come back. i want to get the
first few pages done that demonstrate how to do most things - then the rest can
be filled in as needed. what pages are to be done is listed in the wizard - but
we can make it more minimal to save time.

> has not seen completion yet. It was always on the TODO, but it sprung
> out of no where at a certain point in time during the EFM development
> cycle. Although its a nice and very useful feature, and I think it
> would be a good idea to have it available when we have a release, its
> taken development time from EFM and other incomplete features in E,
> and is currently not finished. Yet another incomplete and relatively
> big feature.

it is really just these 2 big ones with smaller cleanups that need doing - tho
default theme cleanup is not a small task BTW - i'm commenting the .edc heavily.

> Some other items in the TODO are considered medium sized tasks, and
> the majority can be considered small tasks. I don't know about the
> state of things in bugzilla, but we can assume the same as with the
> TODO.

lots of small tasks too - that will sink a lot of time. a lot of these can just
be done in parallel anyway.

> So the main question I have for everyone is, what now? We're writing
> code, time is passing, and we're not closing (or barely closing) any
> of the items on the TODO. New features that are not always planned
> make their way every now and then, and we're never substantially
> closer to a release or a release candidate. What do you folks propose
> we do to handle this problem? Should we freeze the addition of new
> items to E17 (similar to the freeze done a while back) and concentrate
> on closing all the TODO items and the bugs? Whatever decision we make,
> we need to do something about the way E17 is being developed, and the
> pace at which it is being developed at.

the problem is the pace. there are lots of TODO items - most not being done. in
doing efm and wizard - i am trying to knock of some of the big fat items and
get them started/going/ to a state of relative health. i agree we need to
knuckle down on those. the wizard core *i think) is done. its' a matter of
pages to do the setup. we can make it simple - but we do need it. we have
enough problems with users asking about empty/blank app menus and other things
that we need to fix in code on setup (i.e. - find all the xdg menus and ask
user which one they want etc.).

> -- 
> Hisham Mardam Bey
> http://hisham.cc/
> +1-514-713-9312
> Codito Ergo Sum (I Code Therefore I Am)
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
> Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
> Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
> Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
> _______________________________________________
> enlightenment-devel mailing list
> enl...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
> 


-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    ra...@ra...