Re: SLAYER announcement and help request for preparing a GNU package

[Panicz Maciej Godek]

Hello!

It sounds like an interesting project.

The subject line of your post says it is a "GNU Package", but I don't see slayer in
the official list.  Perhaps you mean it is one that you want to submit to
GNU in the hope that they will adopt it as a package? Or did you mean something
else? Obviously how to it should be laid out will depend on that a lot.

Well, I mostly meant a package that is compatibile with GNU system -- so that it would conform to the GNU standards. Whether is should be made an official GNU package is not that important to me, and I think it's still too early to decide

 

Like you say, lack of documentation is will be a big factor in getting users.
How will people know how to use it, and perhaps more importantly WHY the should
use it?

As for now, there are two demos which should help them get around, but I agree that in the longer run the documentation has to appear, especially as the system gets more complex, and as some parts of it become steady.

If it comes to the second question, I think that the simplicity could convince some people to employ slayer to their multimedia projects -- because it requires no additional setup and works out of the box, so for instance it could be quite easily employed to implement the picture language from SICP

Autotools can indeed be tricky - and a time consuming part of maintaining a
package - but they do make it a hell of a lot easier for the general public
to build, especially on wierd systems.

If it comes to weird systems, I also thought that having a build from mingw could also earn some popularity (if it is possible)

Lack of features is a concern - but if you have a dedicated user base, even a small
one, you will get requests for them.  However, if you don't have decent documentation,
and a reliable and portable build system, then you won't have any users ....

I know. For now slayer is a byproduct of my other strivings, but I just thought that someone else could find it useful -- and the feedback could boost the development. Yet at this stage my main target is the community of hackers who could review the code and possibly find their own applications. I think that if someone sees the demos and wants to find out more, then it would make sense to run a documentation wiki or work on the info pages (or -- initially -- to answer the questions via e-mail). This is also why I need someone with more experience, to help me conceive the documentation process.

I'm thinking of slayer as of environment rather than a program, and I think that it could evolve (among others) towards a development environment, so it would make sense if the documentation was available from there as well.

Thanks! :)

M.