[sword-devel] Re: Considering write-up on "Getting Started as BibleCS volunteer"

[Chris Little]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Lynn Allan wrote:

> * Is this part of what twiki (
> http://www.crosswire.org/ucgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/WebHome ) was supposed to
> accomplish? If so, am I misinformed that twiki is now used so little that it
> is effectively counterproductive in that it often/mostly seems to convey
> obsolete, inaccurate information? Is it mostly for historical curiousity to
> see the state of sword in the Oct, 2002 time frame when it was briefly used?

We use TWiki for planning development.  We're not currently in that stage 
because everyone has other commitments ATM, such as the OSIS Bible Tool.  
I think TWiki usage has also decreased with the increase of meetings on 
IRC, since we no longer need the shared whiteboard when the individuals of 
whom we have questions are readily available to ask in realtime.  I don't 
think TWiki usage ever really recovered from the time when it had to be 
moved from sf.

I haven't yet found any obsolete or inaccurate information in my cursory
gloss of the database, but please point any of it out to us if you should
spot some.  I do note the BibleCS Getting Started entry from July of this
year and the main page, which Martin updated two weeks ago--not exactly
Oct 2002, as you mischaracterize.  Is it your implication that we should
run through the whole site every month or so, tagging each page as updated
in order to make it look more up to date?
 
> * Is this part of what of what mvnForm is supposed to accomplish? If so, am
> I misinformed that mvnForum has already been effectively abandoned? It seems
> that after a flurry of initial curiosity/ha-ha postings, it is nearly as
> dead as twiki (one post in the last ten days?)

I'm sorry if I'm not working fast enough for your needs, but I'm quite 
busy actually, with schoolwork, and haven't had the opportunity to do the 
remaining stylesheet & graphics modifications that I want to do before we 
launch the forum publicly.  I guess you'll just need to be patient.

The forums (I've stated this before, here goes, again) are for user 
support & community building.  They have nothing to do with development.  
The forums that sound like they are development-related will be deleted 
before the forum goes public.  Development-related correspondence will 
continue to be done via sword-devel.
 
> * What was the learning curve experience of posters to twiki?

Not sure what this means.  Are you asking how difficult it is to learn to 
use TWiki?  Not very, I suppose.
 
> * Does "The Sword Project" really welcome volunteer "windoze" developers, or
> am I misinformed that this is the equivalent of lip service? Is sword in
> reality a linux project for the miniscual end-user base that still uses
> linux (not just sysadmins)? Is the amount of time wasted by all-concerned
> pretending to have more than negligible interest in BibleCs justified? Why
> would someone use BibleCS when much better free alternatives clearly exist?

Yes, we're happy to have help with development.  I detailed most of the 
situation in my response to your private rant, but to summarize: 
Developing on windows requires acquisition and use of non-free development 
environments.  (I'm aware of cygwin & MinGW, but don't consider them very 
viable solutions, ATM.)  That's just the way it is.  You're essentially 
suggesting that we should drop everything and make functional BCB6 
projects our top priority for your sake.  Assuming they still don't 
function, here's a suggestion: why don't you get them working yourself.  
Open source is about fixing problems yourself.  Here you've found a 
problem.  How about fixing it?  Then the next guy who comes to work on 
BibleCS will have one less thing to do before working on it, and you'll 
probably have become a little more familiar with the project in the 
process.

Of the three folks who contribute to development of BibleCS, two of us 
very seldom use Linux.  So that would be another mischaracterization--but 
you couldn't really have known that.  Of the other, what, half dozen or 
so, continuing contributors to Sword, most work on Linux and work on the 
Linux frontends, etc.  Then there's Will, working on the MacOS X frontend.  
Folks like Don working on the web frontend.  Etc.  It's all in keeping 
with the fact that Sword is cross-platform.

I don't think there are better free alternatives--that's why people would 
use BibleCS.  The free Bible programs for windows are all pretty poor in 
one respect or another.  But, just to rattle off a few reasons why Sword 
is better: more books than anyone else, more internationalization than 
anyone else, features like regex searches and transliteration that no one 
else supports, etc.  I see this question as a total non-sequitur, however, 
since the rest of your message was about development.  If you're 
interested in why people would develop with Sword... the answer is because 
it is the only open source Bible software that is reasonably complete, in 
terms of normal features.

--Chris

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