Suggestions for a few planner features

Dirk Hohndel dirk at hohndel.org
Sat Feb 23 12:06:30 PST 2013


Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 5:34 AM, Krzysztof Arentowicz
> <karent.bug at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 1. it should be possible to configure last deco stop depth.
>
> So I can only say that our biggest issue with features like this is
> not that they are hard to do in the calculations, but that the $%!#
> GUI elements for doing it are a huge pain. Part of it is just coming
> up with a good-looking layout, but a big part of it is also just the
> pain of hooking up the gtk code to make it happen.
>
> Which is why Dirk and I have often asked if there are any gtk people
> around.. Not that you actually need to be an expert in any way, I can
> pretty much guarantee that even if you just know enough to hook up the
> GUI - but then don't know the planning code well enough to make it
> *do* anything, we can easily do the planning part.
>
> So if somebody sends a patch that creates the GUI elements, and the
> GUI looks good, you don't need to worry about the actual planning
> part. We've got multiple people who can do that. We do *not* have
> people who are good at GUI design and like mucking around with the
> proper widgets to make it look good.
>
> I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that I suspect Dirk
> will back me up.

You are absolutely correct, Linus.

We really need people who can put together the UI elements for all
this.

Right now I am focused on fixing the actual bugs in the code and the
binaries I released. So for the next few days that's all I'll be doing
for Subsurface.

After that we need to decide what we want to do for 3.1.

And we need to revisit the question if the massive amount of work to
switch to Qt would be worth while (as it should bring us more people
able to do UI work).

So here's a straight forward question:

Who on this list feels able (and is willing to invest a bit of time) to
write Gtk UI elements that we need? Seriously, please speak up, you are
not committing to any work, I just want to understand how many people
there are...

and second question:

Who on this list feels able (and is willing to invest a bit of time) to
write Qt UI elements that we need?


Because fundamentally, if the second number is about the same as the
first, then this isn't worth it. But if it is much bigger then we should
do it beacuse as Linus says - it's the UI work that holds us back.

/D


More information about the subsurface mailing list