Re: Lumiera work-flow

On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 08:17:02PM +0100, Ichthyostega wrote:
> tonsofpcs schrieb:
> > Long time listener, first time caller!
> Welcome to Lumiera!
> 
> > Anyway, after reading Nikola's post from 19 January, I wanted to add my 
> > thoughts. Having ideas for the projects eventual goal is great, but be aware
> > that you are trying to develop a workflow and interface that will work for 
> > the simple user and the professional.
> ...
> > I propose that instead of creating a simple workflow desirabilities document
> > as you have begun, create a simple set of guidelines for requirements before
> > the system is usable and the minimum workflow and interface requirements ...
> 
> While I agree with you on the goal, I actually think that it will help
> us to start out with a single consistent workflow description as Nicola
> started it. Because I think it's much more easy to reason and discuss
> such a closed and consistent document, than it is to discuss open-ended
> feature lists. Rather, I think we should then discuss this workflow and
> build up those feature lists on the results of the discussion, which
> includes ordering the features into urgent .... nice-to-have.
> 
> > Also, with the goal being a new editing system, I think the current 
> > concentration should be on the editing backend -- where the magic happens,
> Fully agreed, and actually that is what is happening right now.
> The Lumiera project deliberately started to build up from the
> technological core.

For that technological core, I believe you are using traditional 
programming langiages like C or C++ for low-level efficiancy at the cost 
of additional effort in debugging, and at the cost of potential unfound 
bugs that crash the editor.

Might it be worth suggesting that the UI(s) be built in an easier-to-use 
type-safe scripting language (such as python or some other) so that it's 
easier for users to change the UI to suit different workflow patterns 
without risking the integrity of the inner core of the system?

(Maybe Ruby or lua or some other so-called "scripting" language would be 
better; I don't know either well)

It's probably too late to suggest that the efficiency-critical 
core of Lumiera be written in a type-safe systems language (like Modula 
3) that greatly reduces the risks of obscure bugs and simplifies 
trasking them down.  Nor do I know whether the presence of a garbage 
collector in Modula 3 would compromise the real-time aspects of the 
application.  I do know Modula 3 supports multithreaded code.

-- hendrik