Development ⇒ The future of TeXnicCenter

[polet82]

No surprise the crowd is taking, and hardly giving something back. In the case of Windows platform it is a curse. I doubt you can get a patch or any other sort of software development from an ordinary Windows user. Luckily you'll get a few bug reports and some activity (mostly whining) in forums. The Linux world seems to be better in that sense, but it is not perfect either.

TeXnicCenter showed me, that the open source idea does not work for small software -- even not for a successfull software like TeXnicCenter.

I've got your point. However there should be a way to do it. Somehow open source works for all this small projects around. Anyway, it's a quite interesting conversation to continue.

No way the project of this size could support a team of professionals without a generous help of some grant or a company. Things like Google labs could be an option. It is easier to believe in a one-man-project, with volunteer help appreciated. In this case the income money is easier to handle... Let's take the case of Notepad++. It is actively developed. From what I've got, he's getting money from donations and the shop, selling some stuff with his logo. Not sure if he works full time on this project though. Or MiKTeX, which is another one-man successful project, living on donations, afaik. So is it pays off for them or how do they do it?

Getting back to TXC. From what I've got, even if someone would send you a patch you would not implement it and release a new version? But you are willing to give the whole project to a new guy? Aside of forking the code, what would happened to the website, domain name etc.? Theoretically, it is possible just to fork it to add a few features here and there. But then it would quickly turn into a non maintanable spaghetti code. But it is not maintained anyway

[Sven]

From what I've got, even if someone would send you a patch you would not implement it and release a new version?

There you misunderstood me: If someone would send a patch (or even better: fix the problem directly in the TeXnicCenter CVS hosted by sourceforge) I would release a new version.

Aside of forking the code, what would happened to the website, domain name etc.?

I do not fully understand this Why should we fork the code? TeXnicCenter is an open project and everyone is invented to commit his/her features and changes. Even if someone else would be happy to lead the development of TeXnicCenter I would be happy to keep the website uptodate (and even providing a new one, because the current one looks a little bit old fashioned) and care about press relations and things like that. I just do not have the time to care about the development.

[polet82]

Ok, things start to converge now

There you misunderstood me: If someone would send a patch (or even better: fix the problem directly in the TeXnicCenter CVS hosted by sourceforge) I would release a new version.

But here is the thing. Suppose someone creates a patch. Then there should be another one, say "main developer", who knows the code and have a clear overview on what's going on inside TXC. Who can check that code is right, follow the guidelines and does not break anything. If you just snap the patch in, soon the code would be a mess. So far, finding a new project leader is seemed to be unsuccessful. If you could supervise the development (in a fortunate case that there are some), then it may be easier to find occasional patch/feature developers instead of one leader. However, this also require some of your time.

Anyway, these thoughts a purely theoretical so far. Hope there are more people, than just us two, reading this thread. Anyone? Hello!? Come join us, you are very welcome!

Aside of forking the code, what would happened to the website, domain name etc.?

I do not fully understand this Why should we fork the code? TeXnicCenter is an open project and everyone is invented to commit his/her features and changes. Even if someone else would be happy to lead the development of TeXnicCenter I would be happy to keep the website uptodate (and even providing a new one, because the current one looks a little bit old fashioned) and care about press relations and things like that. I just do not have the time to care about the development.

When you fork a project, you get your very own one and do whatever you want with it. If you control the PR part, someone else the development, etc, the "money" question arises. Who gets the decision vote, who tries to implement some business model, and who gets the money/fame. Sharing is a tricky question, as you've mentioned before... That is what I meant by forking.

I'm not aiming for a leader place, at least for now. But this discussion is good to see how such things are done in open source projects. Hope more people would join us.

[rustamabd]

I'm against rewriting TXC in anything other than C++. Anything else is going to be slower, and it does make a difference when you use an ultra-portable. I can type in TXC for 8 hours straight, and with Eclipse my battery runs out in 4 hours! Qt-based editor already exists and is also rather slow (Texmaker).

I think there are few developers mainly because 1) not many LaTeX users are on Windows and 2) TXC is already stable and does what it supposed to do.
In my opinion it should be kept as it is, with some improvements such as Unicode support, more configurability, plug-ins etc.

MSFT is very concerned about losing their VS customer base. They already made VS free. It is possible that MFC might also become free in the near future.

[deviant]

I agree that keeping TXC in C++ is the way to go. A Java implementation would be hideously slow - a complete rewrite seems totally unnecessary. There are probably small stability issues that need rectification as well as some features present in other LaTeX editors not present in TXC (such as a word counter) . The application as a whole functions very well though, and its' integration with MikTex makes LaTex'ing on Windows easier.