Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Archimedes directions

Hello everyone,
Archimedes has been a bit confusing lately. Mainly because I am no longer that excited about the project as a result of working alone for too long (being an agile developer, I love pairing).

I previously announced we were going back to the 0.17.x series to improve it until it reaches a more usable status. The bad news is:
I keep supporting that idea but it seems I will be doing so alone for another long time. I am still working (slowly) on an infra-structure project to simplify the menu/toolbar/statusbar update in Archimedes in order to keep it all more consistant with the program's state. It would also help me maintain the interface code decent enough. Once it is done, I can already release a new verison of that series. The problem is, I cannot estimate when it will happen. All I can say, it is that it will take longer than 3 months.

The good news, however, is that the team of undergraduated and graduated students working on Archimedes has chosen to improve the 0.52.x series by readding the intersection feature. This means intersection selection, single clicks selection, trim, extend, fillet and other intersection dependent features will most likely appear in this series until the end of the semester. On parallel, I hope to work on the importer/exporter features to have save/load and import and export features back also by the end of the semester. If we manage to do it, I might even forget about the 0.17.x series since 0.52.x will be much more maintainble and will have almost all the features from the previous versions. Let's wait and see. I plan to release 0.53.0 by this weekend (6th of april 08) and retake the old weekly releases pace if the team can help me do it.

That's it for now folks.
Cya!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

It's exciting to hear a new release is expected soon!
If the 0.17 series continues will features added to the 0.52 series be implemented (i.e., the context menu during right click of a drawing tab)?

Hugo "NighT" Corbucci said...

I don't really get what you are talking about. I will try to keep 0.17 being updated but I surely will not be as fast as a team working on the other version. So do not expect quick releases nor big features regarding the interface (since it is one of the big differences between both versions). The rest can be easily ported so I might do it if I identify what needs to be brought to 0.17.

Unknown said...

I'm sorry, I must not understand the differences on the developer's side of things. I was simply saying I find it useful to right click the drawing tab to select "new" and "close". In addition to that, double clicking the tab to hide the command line window is something I found useful.

I understand with 6 people working on the Rich Client development there will move faster than the one you're doing alone. My question developed from wondering if you're working on one method of developing this program and a team on another will two different programs result? I think your comment tries to answer that as "probably not much different".

Hugo "NighT" Corbucci said...

Understood you better now :)
Just to make something clear: I am also part of the Rich Client working team. I work on both versions so there shouldn't be conceptual diferences. The only part 0.17 can't handle regarding 0.52 are all the interface improvements such as reorganizing the work area, changing the size of elements, etc...

Because all those would give me way too much work to be worth it. If we manage to improve 0.52 as I expect, I strongly recommend that everyone drop 0.17 unless they can't run the new version (and then someone should tell me why or help me find it out).

It would help us out to have a description of the top 5 features missing in 0.52 if you could point them out.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Top 5 missing in 0.52x that are in 0.17x?

This should really probably be posted elsewhere and I should really be making a list after careful thought before I commit my opinion to the eternity of the Internet, but anyhow:

*The intersection dependent functions you have mentioned would be great.


I've had this window open for awhile now trying to think as a get a moment (at work). I do have a list at home I've been working on in my efforts to create a tutorial. I will check and post tomorrow. I have 3 error logs with me I've been meaning to do something with...can i email them to you or shall I post them somewhere?

Hugo "NighT" Corbucci said...

Mail them. That should do.

You got the idea about the 5 top features. We are already working on the intersection and their dependent features but I mean for after that.

You can post this at the project's page on sf.net. Thanks

Unknown said...

I believe that you should be using the sourceforge infrastructure more. This way there is more possibility to find someone to code along with you.

Anyhow I understand that you are at least 10 days off from your last assumption for the 0.53 release.

I'd like to look through the code and give another try to Java,...

I had been in a project using Java around 3 yrs ago. It was a Direct Connect Hub Software (VaultHub) that died.

I'll now go dig in your 0.52 code ,....

Hugo "NighT" Corbucci said...

Unfortunately, sourceforge is not such a great portal to work with. Not only it has a high latency (due to the amount of projects available) but it is not dynamical and the repository is often unavaible because of conection excess.

The incubadora is local here in Brazil, allows our local team to have a much faster update and commit experience and presents a great bandwith with our university. I am as sorry (or more) as you are of this situation but having the "hire an open source programmer" stuff on every page of sourceforge is making it more a job agency than a project hoster. If you need any help with the code, please warn me.