Re: [evince] Kickstarter campaign for annotation support in evince and poppler-glib

[Hashem Nasarat <hnasarat gmail com>]

On 08/01/2013 02:49 AM, Martin Spacek wrote:
> Hello Jose Alliste and the evince and poppler lists,
>
> Somehow, I wasn't notified of replies to my rant on bugzilla about
> annotation support in evince, back in January:
>
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=692655#c16
>
> Jose, you replied:
>
> > You are welcome to provide patches/start campaigns, etc, to get
> annotation
> > support into Evince. This is a volunteer project and we use any help
> we can
> > get (and if we can't use it, you are always free to fork, evince is
> gpl)
> > Anyway, this is deviating from the issue. We can continue the
> conversation
> > privately if you want/need so.( jose.aliste at gmail.com)
>
> I wish I could provide patches. I certainly have the motivation: I'm
> bothered by the lack of full annotation support on an almost daily
> basis. But, I have no experience with glib, only very minimal
> experience with big C/C++ projects, and no time to devote to changing
> that situation. I'm a Python man, and way past due finishing up my
> PhD. But I was serious about putting some money into a Kickstarter (or
> Indiegogo?) campaign.
>
> I can think of least a few issues that would have to be resolved
> before a fundraising campaign could get off the ground:
>
> Issue #1: what might a Kickstarter campaign promise exactly? Acrobat
> Pro, PDF Xchange, or Foxit -like support for adding, editing, and
> saving annotations back to the open PDF, with some of the more basic
> tools, like highlighting, text annots (box and free), and drawing
> available on a toolbar, in the menu bar and context menu, and perhaps
> via keyboard shortcuts? Different cursor icons for different
> annotation tools?
I would think mockups being established before the campaign would allow
most efficient usage of time (i.e. for whoever who does the work can
just implement). Designing before the campaign also allows the
[designers in the] community to provide useful feedback and the
maintainers to approve.
> Issue #2: who would promise to do the work, and therefore get paid?
> What kind of timeline might we expect? Ideally, a currently
> volunteering senior dev or devs, with plenty of experience with the
> code base, would devote themselves to it full-time for a consecutive
> period, and get paid only if certain features land by a certain time.
Anyone who can implement it! Perhaps several people could apply or
something.
> Issue #3: what should the total minimum pledged amount be?
Perhaps the maintainers could sketch out where the code needs
improvement, and a rough estimation (to be multiplied by 1.5 ;) of how
long the changes might take them. Standard rate for experienced
programmers is what, $30-$40 per hour? If it's an inexperienced person,
they can just get more time. (or more time, less money, and a mentor,
plus a little bit to the mentor?)
> Issue #4: how would we resolve conflicts between the stated goals of a
> potential Kickstarter campaign, and the opinions of existing devs that
> aren't employed by the campagin?
As I mentioned before, hopefully the goals will be established based on
the opinions of existing devs.
> Obviously, the main single reward for all levels of monetary
> contributions would be full PDF annotation support in evince and
> poppler-glib. Maybe another reward level could be special mention in
> the About box, listed in decreasing order of contribution, above a
> certain minimum amount.
>
> However, my biggest worry is that GNOME has been going down the path
> of removing tried and true UI components, like menu bars and toolbars,
> all seemingly for the sake of change, with an air that the GNOMEs know
> best, users be damned, and that giving the (power-ish) user some
> flexibility and customizability are somehow a bad thing. Before you
> ask for references, whether the preceding sentence is true or not is
> irrelevant. The perception among users is very real.
if something is designed well, it shouldn't need fixing
> So, I worry that a Kickstarter campaign for evince and poppler-glib
> might be good money and good intentions chasing the wrong project.
> But, I'd very much like to be proven wrong. The point with a
> Kickstarter campaign is that users could put their money where their
> mouths are, and speak in a voice that's a lot harder to dismiss
> (assuming they can come to some kind of consensus on a desired feature
> set, at least for annotations).
design beforehand should establish consensus. Perhaps advertising for
the campaign can be in two steps: 1 inviting people to get involved with
mockups, then 2 putting the final mockups up on a crowdfunding website

> As I stated in the bug report, I'm willing to personally commit US$200
> towards annotation support in evince, assuming the above issues can be
> hammered out. More importantly, I'm absolutely certain that countless
> other academics, especially those in the harder sciences which are
> more likely to run Linux, would be equally willing to contribute
> monetary support. There would be many places to advertise such a
> campaign, and I think it could be very successful, since the audience
> is so large. Then of course, non-academic Linux users would also find
> full annotation support useful - perhaps not as desperately so as
> academic users, but they'd provide a vastly bigger pool of potential
> contributors.
Perhaps businesses would find this useful too. I'd pay $100. Also,
highlighting and annotations seems to tie in well with the work
beginning to enable touch support in GNOME.
> Thoughts?
>
> -- 
> Martin Spacek
> gmane-at-mspacek-dot-mm-dot-st
> http://mspacek.github.io/
>
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