[bt-devel] Allow me to introduce myself.

[Greg Hellings]

Kevin,

Welcome to the bt-devel list.  I have been a peripheral member of the
BT team since 2005, and also working with the SWORD library at the
same time.  I have a number of very similar interests to you for
similar reasons.  I initially became involved with BibleTime back in
2005 because I was working an internship with Wycliffe Bible
Translators and SIL that summer, and I have kept around since.  Most
of my work has been with the CMake build system and occasional patches
related to that.  Recently I have begun working on a few other pet
tasks since getting involved again with WBT/SIL on the same project I
had started with them in 2005.

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Kevin Shenk <mailbox at kevinshenk.com> wrote:
> Hi Developers,
>
> I just wanted to let you know I just joined the BibleTime development
> mailing list.  I'm a Christian, a computer enthusiast, and a Linux/KDE user,
> so I'm very interested in this project.  I've actually been using this
> program for many years now, and always have had a desire to contribute to
> it's development.  I'm not ready to start developing quite yet, but I'd like
> to see how you guys operate and where you are going with this project.
>
> I have several motives which fuel my interests here.  I love to study the
> Bible.  BibleTime seems to be the most advanced Linux Bible study software
> so far, but it could use many improvements, and I'd love to be part of
> that.  Secondly, I have some close friends who are involved in a Bible
> translation organisation, and I think it'd be cool to implement features
> which would be useful to them in that field.  Thirdly, I really enjoy
> working with computers, and although my work involves programming in Object
> Basic and SQL, I always wanted to learn in C++ and QT.  It's hard for me to
> learn if there's no specific motivation, and improving BibleTime could be
> very motivational for me.

BibleTime can be a great motivator for learning.  While I knew C++
before joining the project, I had no knowledge of Qt at all.  Since
joining, I have tackled a number of tasks in my private work and in
BibleTime that have taught me more about Qt.  I have found Qt to be
very similar to Java's Swing architecture except that it uses signals
and slots instead of event listeners.  However, even those seem to
operate very similarly in my opinion.  If you're comfortable with
Swing, Qt should feel as natural as falling off of a horse.

>
> I'm chock full of ideas, and I find it easy to speak my mind, but I hope I
> can be helpful and not annoying.  I have several aspirations for moderate
> changes in the application, like an accordion navigation pane for the
> bookshelf instead of the list tree view, an MDI search window, auto-loading
> chapters, a breadcrumbs reference navigation panel, better cross-reference
> integration, etc.  Most of these changes would probably only be feasible for
> a major future version (like 3.0?) but I'd love to know how you guys
> brainstorm, make design decisions, what your road-map looks like, and if and
> how I can fit into all of that.

It's more likely that your changes are suitable for the next 2.x
branch.  3.x will probably only appear when BibleTime makes a massive,
fundamental shift away from one major technology and towards another.
1.x to 2.x constituted a massive rewrite of the application to take it
away from using KDE classes and towards using only Qt so we could
support Gnome, Windows, Mac and more.  Of course the KDE classes were
infused throughout the entire application.  We are likely to remain
with 2.x for a long time until we make a similarly seismic shift in
the under-layers of the application.  Your changes sound perfect for a
2.9-2.10 or similar jump.  For bug fixes we release sub-sub-versions
like 2.7.1 and 2.7.2, etc.  So don't wait around for 3.0 discussions
to start before tackling your projects.  They are right in line with
the kind of tasks we include in our y.x release schedules.

If you would like, I have a number of fixes and enhancements that
WBT/SIL are interested in having become part of BibleTime I could pass
along to you in some easy-to-digest way for a new contributor.  And
with the power of git, you can easily tackle any type of project in a
personal branch repo at gitorious and easily collaborate with the rest
of the team.  That is how I have made my proposals and submissions
since the migration to git.  It's very useful and easy, once you get
the hang of git!

--Greg