[bt-devel] Allow me to introduce myself.

[Kevin Shenk]

Thank-you all for your warm responses.

I don't believe I'll be able to actively contribute while I am constrained
to the rigorous demands of my current employment.  Lord willing, that
situation will change by the end of May, when I hope to have time to start
developing.

Meanwhile I'm wondering, is there any roadmap for the project?  How do you
guys usually reach design decisions?  I admire Ubuntu's
"blueprints<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications>"
as a way of documenting major changes before they are ever implemented.
Could/would BibleTime benefit from a similar section of wiki pages, or has a
different development model been already established?

God Bless!
Kevin

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 12:43 PM, Greg Hellings <greg.hellings at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>
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