From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Manish Subject: Re: How you can help Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:42:41 +0530 Message-ID: References: <4246E1BD-91A3-4230-925A-3F812C4C3AB2@uva.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KsvJI-00040C-Fd for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:12:48 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KsvJG-0003zI-K0 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:12:47 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=50569 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KsvJG-0003zA-8v for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:12:46 -0400 Received: from mx20.gnu.org ([199.232.41.8]:21176) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KsvJF-0004UU-HZ for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:12:45 -0400 Received: from ti-out-0910.google.com ([209.85.142.189]) by mx20.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KsvJD-0001MF-01 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:12:43 -0400 Received: by ti-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id u5so126549tia.10 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:12:41 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <4246E1BD-91A3-4230-925A-3F812C4C3AB2@uva.nl> Content-Disposition: inline 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: Carsten Dominik Cc: emacs-orgmode List On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Carsten Dominik wrote: > 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. It is quite a challenge to try out and understand numerous features and facilities already in Org and the pace at which the new changes were coming was unreal and super-human. The backlog of things I wanted to try, understand and absorb in my workflow was consistently increasing. This is not a complaint; I am having so much fun. *BUT* I do not want my favourite developer of my favourite package in my favourite editor to burn out. Please do take it easy. Unfortunately, I can not help with #3 (adopting a subsystem) since I am Lisp-challenged but with rest I will. Sincere thanks for all your time, effort and sacrifices. -- Manish