contributing to Subsurface - please read

[Dirk Hohndel]

As I'm about to do Beta 2 (later today, maybe tomorrow) I want to mention
a few things that seem important in the context of getting ready for a
release...

Many of you ask me when they start "what can I do - I can't program, how
can I help?"

THIS is the time when you can help the most. Read the user manual and
compare to the actual software. Any inconsistencies? Things missing?
Misleading? Please report.

Play with the software. Try strange things. Edit stuff. Change it. Resort
it. Open old logfiles. The test dives. Anything odd? Please report.

Try re-importing from your dive computer (maybe into a new logfile).
Editing dives, what you would do if these indeed were new dives. Sync with
the companion app. Anything amiss? Please report.

Go through the bug tracker at trac.hohndel.org. Simply pick a few bugs,
try to reproduce them, add a comment and close them if things are fixed,
or a note if things still are wrong, or if data is missing to reproduce
them.

Look at the translation on Transifex. Swedish, French, Estonian, Italian,
Slovak, Latvian, Chinese, Brazilan Portuguese, Greek, Romanian, Hebrew...
they all could use a lot of help.


I want to give a special shout of THANK YOU to Henrik. He has been a
contributor since the early days, disappeared for a while and thankfully
became active again a little while ago. Over the last two weeks he has
filed something like a dozen bugs, verified the fixes, went through tons
of old bugs, reclassified them, closed them when they no longer applied
and overall done a fantastic job helping us (and especially me) to get
ready for 4.2. And of course he also kept the critically important
Norwegian translation at 100% completed.

I'm so glad you are back on board, Henrik.

Thanks, of course, to all the others who have been stepping up these past
few weeks. Tomaz, Miika, Anton, Sergey, Tim, Robert, Gaetan, Gehad,
Salvador, Joakim... all the other translators (we have ELEVEN translation
already at 99 or 100% - that's amazing). All the people contributing here
on the mailing list and on IRC.

I think we should start an annual competition for the most active
contributor or something. The winner gets a dive trip (at his or her own
expense - sorry) with Linus and me :-)

The winner for July 2013 - June 2014 (Tomaz, of course) will join us next
month in Mexico... here's your chance... get helping :-)

/D