From: Dom Lachowicz (domlachowicz@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 20:35:27 EDT
Great. So besides this post, how are you going to help
out?
Dom
--- r coyne <duckingsnofair@yahoo.com> wrote:
> [If this belongs on the developer list, someone
> please
> forward; I've never gotten acquainted with that
> one.]
>
> Now that Abiword 2 is out, more or less (and people
> are even speaking of 2.2), it's time to put in my
> two
> cents worth on planning for Abi 3. Reading the
> posts
> here, I am continually struck (and appalled, and
> scared off) by how fragile abi is. One seems to
> need
> exactly the right versions of everything, or they
> won't work together and may cause very serious
> problems. What with various projects and developers
> and packagers and download sites all over the world
> working rather independently and asynchronously,
> this
> degree of coordination is not to be expected. And
> even if it were possible, purely from the user's
> point
> of view it is very inconvenient and offputting to
> have
> to upgrade everything at once rather than
> incrementally at leisure and maybe selectively. And
> what gets me is that I don't see why it has to be
> this
> way.
>
> Take plug-ins, for example -- a never-ending source
> of
> problems. I don't understand how plugins work, but
> surely it should be possible to vector them through
> some sort of table of pointers or jump addresses or
> instructions in such a way that any given
> function(ality) is guaranteed to be findable in the
> same place even as the actual code gets rewritten
> and
> moved around and new abilities added in future
> versions.
>
> I realize that abi is designed to run on a multitude
> of platforms and that this complicates matters. But
> don't all operating systems nowadays provide pretty
> much the same basics, like a directory tree,
> environmental variables, pipes, and so on? And if
> you
> stick with a programming language compiler/package
> that is widely available, won't it do a lot of the
> work of coordination, adapting to each OS it runs
> on?
> So if you take a lowest-common-denominator approach
> and if you spend enough time and effort early on,
> like
> now, working out the conventions for how the various
> routines, modules, files, programs, plugins,
> packages,
> etc. are supposed to find and communicate with each
> other, I would think you could come up with
> something
> less demanding and more robust than the present
> arrangements.
>
> And to the extent this requires discussions and
> agreements with other projects, get to it; attend
> those conferences. If somebody in the open-source
> world has to invent some conventions, why not abi?
> Design something that will do the trick and put out
> a
> RFC.
>
> And then, of course, there's the whole issue of
> intelligent, informative, crash-proof handling of
> error conditions, and the need for careful, loving
> attention to documentation.
>
> What I am saying, basically, is that with the
> release
> of 2.0, abi is probably approaching the point of
> diminishing returns to features. 3.0 should be
> about
> bulletproofing and getting it "ready for prime
> time";
> in other words, this is the time to "start over from
> the beginning and this time do it right," now that
> you
> understand the problems.
>
> But then, I haven't programmed in years and am far
> from au courant, so I'm just talking through my hat
> and may be totally wrong. And I do mean this as a
> what-the-user-wants tip for 3.0, not a criticism of
> 1
> and 2 or the developers who gave them to us. In the
> early versions, it was only natural and proper to
> concentrate on getting something up and running that
> would be worth using. I write this because I
> suspect
> that, especially in a decentralized, volunteer
> organization like abi, with no one exactly in charge
> and authorized to turn the whole thing on a dime,
> institutional habit and momentum may inhibit the
> sort
> of grand rethinking I'm talking about, even when it
> is needed.
>
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