[sword-devel] free Windows compiler for SWORD

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Hey guys,
	Just a few comments.

	Chris is back at Berkeley for the summer, so, in theme, he's just being 
dissenting.  His views are by no means representative of the majority here.

	He does make a good point in that it would be MUCH MORE WORK FOR HIM if 
we had a million people submitting modules.

	Don makes a good point that we want to enable people to easily place 
their content into our software-- and I agree.

	I think the problem we're having is making the distinction between 
SUBMITTING MODULES FOR HOSTING AT CROSSWIRE, and MAKING AND HOSTING YOUR 
OWN CONTENT.

	In my opinion the solution is to:

	1) make it easy for anyone to import content for SWORD, and
	2) take a HARD stance on getting content on crosswire.org.  Basically, 
we don't accept user made contributions (period).

   Now, if someone wants to join sword-devel; become a part of our 
community; interact with Chris and others who are working on modules on 
a regular basis; post their intentions and get direction from our module 
expert (Chris); then fine, we'll THINK ABOUT accepting their work. :)

	I also, as a regular linux user, don't take Chris' (a regular windows 
user, and self-proclaimed windows/microsoft advocate) comments on linux 
binaries very seriously.

	:),
	
	-Troy.



Hugo van der Kooij wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Chris Little wrote:
> 
> 
>>Leon Brooks wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 04:06, Chris Little wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>And it nonetheless stands; Linux users who don't know how to compile
>>>>for themselves need to learn (or move back to Windows).
>>>
>>>
>>>Or, to read this another way, if you're an _administrator_ instead of a 
>>>user, compiling should be no problem. Users of the dolly-bird-secretary 
>>>or rough-n-tough-farmhand variety shouldn't need to know. "Just because 
>>>you can" is not the same as "you should".
>>
>>Ok, let me put it this way.  If you don't know how to compile on Linux, 
>>that probably means you were too lazy to read the documentation or are 
>>not sufficiently technical to follow it.  Both of these situations 
>>suggest a very high likelihood that I don't want your module 
>>contribution anyway.  Why?  Because it will require more work from me to 
>>fix it than it took for you to make it in the first place and in all 
>>probability we would have all been better off if I'd just done it myself 
>>in the first place.  In other words, if not having the tools (or not 
>>being able to compile them) had prevented you from making a module, it 
>>would have saved everyone a lot of work.
> 
> 
> This sounds like doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
> 
> I amrather familiar with HTML and SGML assume I can get my head around 
> other descriptive languages.
> 
> I can compile my own software and propably fix a Makefile or give a 
> detailed report so the author of the software can fix it as I am no 
> programmer.
> 
> But to this day I have not been able to understand from the crosswire 
> website how to go about and create a module if I wanted to. And I have 
> been looking into some Dutch documents I might want to add. But to this 
> day I find the website too hard navigate to find anything beyond the 
> modules itself.
> 
> If you want people to contribute you might want to considere which skills 
> are required and which are not. At present the information is too hard to 
> find. (I would expect some information at 
> http://www.crosswire.org/sword/volunteer/writers.jsp but there is none.)
> 
> So some short term issues  you may want to fix:
>  - Use the <title> info so navigation of the website makes more sense.
>  - Define "Developers", "Volunteers" and "publishers" as it is not clear 
>    enough what you mean by those section.
> 
> I fear you assume everyone thinks the way you do and will find your way of 
> organizing things the logical way. In my experience if 10 persons should 
> organize the information you end up with anywhere between 5 and 8 
> different approaches.
> 
> Hugo.
>