February 2008 - Wine-Devel - list.winehq.org

Re: Do we need a forum?

by Steven Edwards

On Feb 18, 2008 6:57 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote: > And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someone who knows > AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB > forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And > of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in > Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another > problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular > application or applications at all - for example, general question about > compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users > archive with AppDB to see the difference). We discussed this at wineconf and could not reach consensus on what would be the best method. > Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (try in Google > for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official > WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues > in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums. That was the idea in creating wine-forum. It would be one forum to bind them all so to speak. Currently wine discussion is fragmented across various forums in ubuntu, gentoo, Play on Linux, Winedoors, etc > Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums, this is > really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes > WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long > time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on > the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration > process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related > issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but > never find enough time and motivation to register. > This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create > forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam > bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered > users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important > to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise > (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important > issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important > features at all (just a note). > And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, > with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in > this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to > help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is > intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. > As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion > about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is > useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to > create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) > as a result of the discussion. As I stated, we discussed this at wineconf and consesus was not reached. Dan wanted to use google groups, others want to keep mailing lists, while others still want to use the newsgroups. wine-forum is run by Tom Wickline who is a long time wine contributor so while I would support a better system that integrates with appdb and the winehq mainsite better, I am leery of yet another system if its not going to have someone or someones dedicated to maintain it for years to come. Also as I stated, I don't think appdb is covers every discussion topic unless you extend it to support distros, Wine forks, winelib application projects, etc. Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience. -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

Feb. 19, 2008

Re: iTunes

by Maarten Lankhorst

2008/2/18, Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger(a)gmx.at>: > Am Montag, 18. Februar 2008 06:34:04 schrieb Edward Savage: > > Maarten why not focus on supporting applications that don't have viable > > open source solutions first? I can think of hundreds. > > > > The only thing iTunes will add, with full support, is ipod syncing (that > > isn't useless). > > > > Or should we avoid that debate? > I think it would probably be better not to debate, but the issue is this: For > you there are viable itunes alternatives, and for you there are other > applications which do not have alternatives. Compare this to the discussions > wether working on Microsoft Office is a waste of time or not. Everyone has > other expectations, so it is *very* hard to judge which application will be > useful and which not. > > In the same way the usefullness of $APP in Wine differs from person to person. > A bug which is worth a small remark on a review for one person is a killer > bug for another. > > To come back to iTunes, I have met a few people who considered Linux but were > stopped by iTunes for various reasons. Some may seem laughable to tech-savy > people(Other apps look differently), some are technically reasonable(iTunes > shop, DRM support). Of couse you can find 100 reasons why AutoCAD is more > important than iTunes, but you can also find 100 reasons why iTunes is more > important than ACAD Well I bought an ipod touch. But there are no other apps then iTunes that can do the firmware upload so it's sort of laying on my desk until I can figure it out. That aside, the alternatives rely on tactics that are similar to loading malware. Real alternatives for iTunes? Not so much. Cheers, Maarten.

Feb. 19, 2008

Re: Do we need a forum?

by L. Rahyen

On Monday February 18 2008 22:10:52 Jeff Zaroyko wrote: > L. Rahyen <research <at> science.su> writes: > > Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who > > have forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, > > registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; > > this another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad > > as it seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such > > drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server > > isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course > > mailing list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between > > official mailing list and official forum). > > Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our > > users) to what we have now or not?... > > We already have a forum, the appdb. > > I think it just needs some work to make what we have, better so that it > actually looks like a forum, as I elaborated on in this post here > > http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.wine.devel/57058 > > It's just a matter of some modification to create a better user interface, > there's no need to create a new forum, just change how we can view and > interact with the existing data. It is important that someone actually started to work on this otherwise your idea will never be actually implemented (in near future at least). For me, for example, this is to hard to implement because I don't know AppDB good enough and have very limited free time. And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someone who knows AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular application or applications at all - for example, general question about compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users archive with AppDB to see the difference). Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (try in Google for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums, this is really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but never find enough time and motivation to register. This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important features at all (just a note). And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) as a result of the discussion.

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: Do we need a forum?

by Jeff Zaroyko

Steven Edwards <winehacker <at> gmail.com> writes: > > On Feb 18, 2008 5:10 PM, Jeff Zaroyko <jeffzaroyko <at> gmail.com> wrote: > > We already have a forum, the appdb. > > appdb seems limited by default to being about applications. What about > discussion issues with other linux distros, solaris, OS X and forks of > Wine? That was the purpose of http://www.wine-forum.org > > It should cover everything the appdb forum does not. > I don't see what you mean, the majority of discussion or request for help with wine is to do with applications, if a user is experiencing a problem with an application on any distro it still relevant to the application. This is why I think that my idea of simply creating useful view of the current data and a slightly different styled interface would be better than websites like wine-forum.org. I don't see the point in discussing forks of wine in a _wine_ discussion forum, discussion of other projects should be elsewhere imo.

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: Do we need a forum?

by Steven Edwards

On Feb 18, 2008 5:10 PM, Jeff Zaroyko <jeffzaroyko(a)gmail.com> wrote: > We already have a forum, the appdb. appdb seems limited by default to being about applications. What about discussion issues with other linux distros, solaris, OS X and forks of Wine? That was the purpose of http://www.wine-forum.org It should cover everything the appdb forum does not. -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: iTunes

by Stefan Dösinger

Am Montag, 18. Februar 2008 06:34:04 schrieb Edward Savage: > Maarten why not focus on supporting applications that don't have viable > open source solutions first? I can think of hundreds. > > The only thing iTunes will add, with full support, is ipod syncing (that > isn't useless). > > Or should we avoid that debate? I think it would probably be better not to debate, but the issue is this: For you there are viable itunes alternatives, and for you there are other applications which do not have alternatives. Compare this to the discussions wether working on Microsoft Office is a waste of time or not. Everyone has other expectations, so it is *very* hard to judge which application will be useful and which not. In the same way the usefullness of $APP in Wine differs from person to person. A bug which is worth a small remark on a review for one person is a killer bug for another. To come back to iTunes, I have met a few people who considered Linux but were stopped by iTunes for various reasons. Some may seem laughable to tech-savy people(Other apps look differently), some are technically reasonable(iTunes shop, DRM support). Of couse you can find 100 reasons why AutoCAD is more important than iTunes, but you can also find 100 reasons why iTunes is more important than ACAD

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: [PATCH 2/3] gdi32: Move EnumFontFamiliesEx16() and helper functions to gdi16.c.

by Michael Stefaniuc

Michael Stefaniuc wrote: > --- > This duplicates for now the FONT_LogFont16ToW() function but Alexandre It duplicates FONT_LogFontWTo16() and not FONT_LogFont16ToW() (that one was already duplicated). > told me on irc that he removed the other user of it in an yet unpublished > patch. Thus FONT_LogFont16ToW() can be removed from font.c in a later FONT_LogFontWTo16() can be removed later on. > patch. > bye michael

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: Do we need a forum?

by Jeff Zaroyko

L. Rahyen <research <at> science.su> writes: > Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have > forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, > registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this > another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it > seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such > drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server > isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing > list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official > mailing list and official forum). > Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) > to what we have now or not?... > We already have a forum, the appdb. I think it just needs some work to make what we have, better so that it actually looks like a forum, as I elaborated on in this post here http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.wine.devel/57058 It's just a matter of some modification to create a better user interface, there's no need to create a new forum, just change how we can view and interact with the existing data.

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: [1/16] msxml3: Support functions for typelib

by Alexandre Julliard

"Alistair Leslie-Hughes" <leslie_alistair(a)hotmail.com> writes: > What is the best course of actions? > 1. AddRef in get_typeinfo and therefore Release in GetIDsOfNames and Invoke > or > 2. AddRef in GetTypeInfo, and nothing else has to be changed. You have to follow the COM rules, so 1. -- Alexandre Julliard julliard(a)winehq.org

Feb. 18, 2008

Re: Do we need a forum?

by L. Rahyen

On Monday February 18 2008 21:07:46 Christopher Harvey wrote: > L. Rahyen wrote: > > On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote: > >> On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote: > >>> Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide > >>> to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have > >>> possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the > >>> forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding > >>> message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using > >>> cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of > >>> them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, > >>> personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long > >>> time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support > >>> such forum - then wine-users is enough I think. > >> > >> In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' > >> people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users > >> prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're > >> trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an > >> easier way to do this, IMHO. > > > > Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For > > example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give > > functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose > > something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. > > In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have > > programming experience with this in the past, and I can create > > ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also > > its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. > > But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is > > acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then > > what is acceptable. > > I agree with Austin. Mailing lists are faster and come with less bloat > and wasted time waiting for icons to load. I'm assuming most people use > an e-mail client like Thunderbird or evolution. What do we have to gain > with a forum? Yeah, I agree. This is why I like mailing list more than forums. But some users prefer forums. Just see how many users use forums for general WINE-related discussions, and compare this to mailing list activity. if we decide that we need a forum, I can help here as I said already. But I don't have strong opinion here (because, as I said, I like mailing lists more than forums; however, if there is demand + positive decision in the developer community I will be glad to help anyway). So if someone think that we need such forum - please tell about this! There is no point in whole this discussion if there is no demand for this... > The biggest loss with a forum would be more stress and > dependence on the server....besides, mailing lists are the standard for > this sort of thing. Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official mailing list and official forum). Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) to what we have now or not?...

Feb. 18, 2008