[CREATE] LGM11 panel proposal: attracting new devs

[Yuval Levy]

On February 20, 2011 02:23:50 am Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> It's quite the same with Inkscape, except that some of the students
> stick and continue working past their projects.

oh, we got those too.  I don't know if Inkscape has more;  and I don't know if 
our experience is representative.  Students seem to stick around while they 
are still students, until they get a job and a life.

Without hard data but just from being in touch with them regularly, our 
typical "hard core" contributors are at a mature stage of their life.  Most 
have kids or partner;  most have a good job in IT or academia;  most can 
afford the kind of four-digits-dollars gear that makes toying with Hugin 
interesting.


> But GSoC has really
> been giving us 50% of new stuff in final releases.

Can't beat three months full-time with spare-time [0] (and the article talks 
about one of the features that we have not been able to integrate yet, which 
is sad).

 
> I won't quote the rest of your reply, because I simply agree :)

I agree with you too, my friend:

 
> I'm strongly against the idea of getting just developers involved.

+1/2.  I think you mean "coders".  To me, every contributor contributes to the 
development of the project;  translators just work in a different language 
than C/C++ but they are developing as well.  Same for those writing 
documentation, tutorials, blueprints, binary builds, etc.

If you look at the history of our wiki pages and compare it against the 
repository committers, you will notice that most contributions to the wiki are 
from non-coders.


> There's heaps of work to do in the usability and design department

+2!  Plenty of it.

I rant often and loud about Gimp, but I still try equally hard to use it 
instead of Photoshop in Wine.

I get along with the UIs of Hugin and Inkscape but there is so much room to 
adapt them to my way of working.

Is there a preference to keep my commonly used dockable dialogs open on 
startup, or di I have to go through shift-ctrl-[FLT...] at every new start?

The following will raise controversy (I remember the reaction of one Gimp 
developer at LGM a few years ago):  I strongly believe that the best UI is the 
one modeled after the user; and since every user is different and has 
different needs, a proper, modern UI should be easy to fiddle with / 
customize.  The consequence of this is that UI should be in scriptable 
languages like Python or Lua to make it easy on the user to "pseudo-code" 
his/her own UI.


> GIMP team has been benefitting from work
> with Peter Sikking for some years now

... and has improved, but there is still way to go.  I personally still 
stumble into paper-cuts.  Example:  GIMP has this wonderful "create from 
clipboard" function: if there is an image in the clipboard, it is a single 
operation to turn it into a new document.  Shift+Ctrl+V.  Good intention.

Unfortunately this is not how I work.  Because in *every* other application I 
use it is Ctrl+N followed by Ctrl+V.  Example: LibreOffice.  So I have this 
reflex of going Ctrl+N Ctrl+V.  It would be nice if the Ctrl+N dialog would 
come pre-filled with the width and height from the clipboard image.  But that 
would make it too much like Photoshop?  So thank you GIMP for trying to teach 
me a new trick (Shift+Ctrl+V) instead of using the tricks I already know.  
Reminds me of the Citroen 2CV's gearstick sticking out of the dashboard... and 
it's weird window.


> IMO it [usability] needs full attention. We can't just pile new code on top
> of other code and get away with that.

IMO usability is like security.  It can't be just added later.  It must be 
part of the design considerations from the start; and every coder should be at 
least aware (if not proficient).

A few decades ago this was a new industry and so those who developed back then 
got a green field to work on.  They could get away with whatever.  Now we are 
in a more mature stage; the field is built up, the landscape is there and we 
can only add to it carefully.  Thirty years ago TV manufacturers had different 
menus and controls; nowadays they all feel and look the same with little 
variations, adapted to the user.  Hundred years ago car manufacturers used to 
place their controls in different places;  nowadays they are all the same and 
if I enter a Toyota, a Ford, or a Volkswagen, I can start driving right away 
because their interfaces connect with what I know from previous experiences 
with cars; and traffic signs are mostly harmonized too.

Yuv



[0] http://panospace.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/keeping-in-touch/
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