Re: Eu OpenSource Vision
Hi,
I think Martin brings up a good issue: how to get more people interested in
Euphoria. However, I don't totally agree with his suggestions. I think
point 2 and 3 are a bit beside the real issue and point 5 is already done.
My comment on the other points: free is not always better. I'm willing to
pay for quality. In my opinion Euphoria has quality. I came across Euphoria
whem I was looking for information about Visual Basic. I didn't know
Euphoria by then because it's quit exotic. It's the quality of the
programming concept what made me decide to use it, not the marketing
concept. But I agree that the marketing could be better. The possibility
tot try it for free is good. I think it's one of the best ways to interest
people. I've used Euphoria for a month now and I've come tot the point that
I want to buy the full package. What I had like to do is going to a shop,
look for that nice box with Euphoria, read what's in the box (CD,
documentation, etc.), look at the other boxes to convince myself that I
made the right decision and buy the thing for 40 euro (about $40). For more
detailed information I'd go the bookstore and buy a good book about
programming in Euphoria in my native language.
Now I have to find someone with a creditcard or take a day of to go to the
bank to make an international money-transfer with all extra costs. I then
get a floppy, have to pay transportcosts and wait for ten days. People
don't like that.
Okay, it's the chicken and egg story. Because you don't have enough users,
shops won't sell you package (or you just don't have the recources to reach
the shops in the first place), and because people don't see your product
the number of users grow very slow. But one could make a start. First of
all make a nice CD with a nice jewel-box of it. Try to get selling-agents
in as much country's as possible (to avoid the shipping and money-transfer
problems). Make documentation in the shape of a book. Try to get reviews in
PC-magazines. These are just e few suggestions with are low-cost and you
still sell via the internet.
Greetings,
Jasper.
martin.stachon@worl
donline.cz To: EUforum at topica.com
cc:
26-09-2001 18:29 Subject: Eu OpenSource Vision
Please respond to
EUforum
Hello,
this is my vision of Euphoria :
*The Current State*
The includes distributed with Eu are enough only for DOS.
The most useful libraries are the ones created by users
and with source aviable.
Most the libraries and tools aren't updated frequently (except the IDE),
or they are abandoned (EuSock), or they are lacking documentation,
are incomplete, or have bugs. Some important libraries haven't been written
yet (DirectX)
To Euphoria be competitive with other languages (VisualBasic, C)
that comes with CDs full of libraries and exaples, this should be changed.
For example, newbies often want to write games. Although Eu is easy and
fast to learn language, good for newbies, they have no easy way to use
DirectX.
(And I'm not mentioning all the lots of 3D engines aviable for C/C++).
After saying
"Euphoria is some DOS crap.", they will move to C, where they will have
problems
with pointers, types etc.
*Things that can be done*
1) Get larger user base. The most difficult and most important point.
2) Unite programing style and naming and formatting conventions.
I would suggest the standart RDS style, expcept that tabs would
be used for formatting instead of spaces. Optionally create a tool,
similiar to C "indent" to automatically reformat sources.
3) Unite way to submit patches. If more people were working on single
project, the current practise of sending whole changed libraries or
describing "change this there and that over there" would be uneffective.
A solution based on UNIX "diff" command, or something like that would be
good.
4) Make Euphoria interpreter aviable for free, or at least remove the 300
statement
limit. This would help point 1)
Or even make the interpreter completely open source, with a maintainer
(Rob),
which would keep the style and conception of the language, and wouldn't
allow
'wild' changes (labels, pointers).
5) Set up a page for Eu OpenSource projects with mailing lists, info, news,
progress status,
what can be done, latest patches etc. etc. This could be eventually
hosted at rapideuphoria.com
6) Choose a license for distributing programs and libraries (GPL, LPL ?)
With more libraries and tools aviable, more users would use Eu, making
more libs and tools etc.
Do you think it is impossible ?
Regards,
Martin Stachon
martin.stachon at worldonline.cz
http://www.webpark.cz/stachon
|
Not Categorized, Please Help
|
|
