From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carsten Dominik Subject: How you can help Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:35:46 +0200 Message-ID: <4246E1BD-91A3-4230-925A-3F812C4C3AB2@uva.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v929.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Ksujc-0000R1-Oz for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:35:56 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Ksuja-0000QZ-AK for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:35:55 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=52160 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ksuja-0000QW-42 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:35:54 -0400 Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]:16343) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KsujZ-0005XL-Ps for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:35:54 -0400 Received: from postduif.ic.uva.nl ([145.18.40.180]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KsujY-0006Yr-Qq for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:35:53 -0400 Received: from nb-dominik2.science.uva.nl (nb-dominik2.science.uva.nl [146.50.22.167]) (authenticated bits=0) by postduif.ic.uva.nl (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m9N7Zl2p020188 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:35:47 +0200 List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode List Hi Org users, I need to get control over the time I spent on developing Org-mode. Recently, I have again worked too hard on it, spending more time than I should, in order to get 6.9 and 6.10 out and to seize the chance to get the best possible version into Emacs 23.1. However, this is getting out of control, and I am now putting myself a hard limit of 1 hour per day, clocked by Org-mode, which will clearly cut in on my development speed and posting rate. Here is how you can help me to make the most of that one hour. 1. If you report a bug, please try to do as much work as you can yourself. Before you send it, think if you have collected all the information you can. There are great examples of good bug reports on the list already. The best bug reports are, of course, those that are accompanied by a patch. 2. If you are reading the list and see bug reports, consider putting in 10 minutes, trying to reproduce this problem yourself, and maybe adding information that might be useful for me to track down that bug. Again, this is already happening, I am only trying to encourage this type of behavior. 3. I have recently spent much time on fixing bugs in parts of Org that I did not write myself, so this is taking much more time than usually. If you know Emacs Lisp, and I know there are a number of excellent Lisp programmers on this group, consider "adopting" one of the following subsystems. By "adoption", I mean that you make it your mission to deeply understand this part of Org, so that *you* will be in the position to fix bugs, taking that off my shoulders. - org-publish.el. I think the biggest bugs are out now, but I am sure this system can be improved quite a bit. If you are that Lisp programmer trying to take up this task, consider teaming up with Sebastian Rose who is a great guy, has quite some understanding of that system and good ideas about it, but just is not enough of a Lisp programmer to really take that on. - org-export-latex.el. This is a tough one because you need to know both LaTeX and Lisp. And the code is complex, in part because Org-mode allows to write LaTeX is a relatively lazy way. Bastien has done a great great job capturing this into an exporter. However, there are still problems and bugs, some came up recently on the list. And Bastien currently does not have the time to contribute consistently. As a result, I have started to fix some bugs, but this is really eating too much of my time. This subsystem can also use feature additions, for example better handling of image insertion, maybe with captions. I have ideas about this, so talk to me if you want to help out. 4. Try to answer as many messages on the mailing list as you can. I have been trying hard to make sure that each and every reasonable question on the list (and this is really the only kind we get in this amazing community) will be answered. Doing this still takes a significant fraction of my Org-mode development time. I will clearly spend less time on this in the future, in this way also giving others more time to answer. Again, there are already quite a few people who regularly *answer* questions, and all I am trying to do here is encouraging this activity. 5. Help developing the Org-mode FAQ by adding useful information to it yourself. All you need to do is to get acces to Worg, which will help getting to know git in the process. Worg is meant to be user edited, so please go wild and add information and links at will. Thanks to you all, for your understanding and help. - Carsten