Re: Public visibility and component repository

["Owen Fraser-Green" <owen discobabe net>]

Hi,

>         * Bonobo has only just been frozen. For a long time people who
> have depended on it have got broken regularly and suffered lots of pain.

Yes. I can see in hindsight that it would have been a bad idea to push
something was a work in heavy progress.

>         * Bonobo has only recently got documentation that people can read
> - the work in progress can be seen at:
>
>         http://primates.ximian.com/~michael/bonobo-docs.tar.gz  or
>         http://primates.ximian.com/~michael/bonobo-docs/book1.html
>
>         Hopefuly good documentation - and there is plenty still to do
> there - will encourage people to use Bonobo more abundantly.

The work you have done in documenting the API is excellent as is the example
of creating a component and Miguel's Introduction to Bonobo. I just
feel that as well as good documentation, a single access point to the Bonobo
resources which wraps up the documents, discussion forum, CVS and a
component repository would benefit the project alot. For example, in order
to just figure out what Bonobo was and what stage of development it was in
consisted of a couple of hours of Google searches and chasing broken links.

>         * Bonobo was initialy extremely difficult to use, many of the
> usability problems have been addressed and it is now far easier - there is
> still a perception barrier to climb over though.

See above :)


> ... I anticpate
> that when more, stable components are shipped by distributors, more people
> will use them and finding them will be as simple as running:
>
>         oaf-run-query "repo_ids.has ('IDL:Bonobo/Unknown:1.0')"

Yes, but I believe a central repository would provide an excellent means of
finding controls which are not already registered on the user's machine. I
also feel that repositories such as freshmeat and CPAN have done alot to
encourage development as they provide an easy means for developers to gain
instant fame for their work. I can see the benefit of waiting until there
are "more, stable components" but I also think there is an even more
positive benefit in advertising the early development stage components. That
is that people looking to see if it's worthwhile writing a new component can
look and see that there is a project to write one underway which they can
join. That way, the project can gain momentum.

Regards,
Owen

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     Owen  Fraser-Green             "Hard work never killed anyone,
     owen discobabe net              but why give it a chance?"
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