Re: Questions (was: Re: A Critique: Getting Started with GNUstep on Windows)

[Doc O'Leary]

For your reference, records indicate that 
Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard.frith-macdonald@brainstorm.co.uk> wrote:

> But in a volunteer-based system,  people must *demonstrate* improvement
> to encourage others;

Exactly backwards.  Inspiration comes from putting forward good *ideas*,
not just the haphazard effort of busywork.  You do *nothing* to encourage
contributions to GNUstep when you give the all-too-standard guidance of
“just do a bunch of work, and *if* we like it we *might* use it.”  Knock
that shit off and put a rudder on this ship.

> you don't just say that the existing stuff is not good enough, since
> doing that just makes the existing volunteers unhappy.

They *should* be unhappy.  Unhappy enough to actually engage in a
conversation about how to *plan* to make things better.

> When someone simply complains

Nobody is doing that.  Every time these threads pop up, it is someone
testing the waters *again* to see if the leadership is *finally*
willing to set a direction that will make GNUstep relevant to a larger
community.

> but when it comes to documentation, if I had time to spare, I'd spend
> it on *content* (eg documenting GNUstep specific stuff like renaissance)
> rather than on presentation of what's largely duplication/restatement of
> Cocoa API documentation.

I essentially agree with this.  My continued call for a vision/mission
statment should really be seen as a call for “documentation” at a high
level.  This is the big problem with projects that are only focussed on
code commits: bottom up work is seldom organized/refactored to fit into
the greater context that *should be* subsuming it.

So, yes, Apple’s Cocoa documentation could be co-opted to serve as a
kind of “design” document for a certain aspect of GNUstep, but the
project really needs to set out a much wider context for the frameworks
it has, both in the top-down structure and the differences that exist
in the actual implementation (as compared to the Apple “reference”).

-- 
"Also . . . I can kill you with my brain."
River Tam, Trash, Firefly