Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
- 7.8K All Categories
- 11 Help with translations
- 4.2K General questions
- 107 Roadmap
- 358 Game & application design
- 316 Plugins
- 70 User experience
- 75 Marketplace
- 291 Code snippets
- 34 Building a team?
- 269 Suggestions & requests
- 352 Announce your apps made with Gideros.
- 90 Step by step tutorials
- 668 Bugs and issues
- 195 Introduce yourself
- 239 Announcements
- 106 Forum talk
- 404 Relax cafe
Gideros' future and contributions
stetso
Member
Hi again,
WARNING: longer text ahead @-)
from the perspective of a relatively new user (i.e. my perspective O:-) ) I wanted to share a few thoughts about Gideros and maybe get your opinion and suggestions on them. First, I tried various engines and frameworks before settling with Gideros and I really like what it offers. I think the balance between structure provided by the engine and openness for your own code is really great. The API is relatively small so it is really easy to actually find your way around. However, to be honest, it took me a little while before deciding to actually invest some time into it. The reason is mainly the way Gideros presents itself to the newcomer. Now that I am here, I realize that the community is rather small and this makes me appreciate the amazing work that the maintainers do even more. However, this probably comes at the expense of the presentation, namely the website and documentation. ATM, it is really difficult for a new user to gather information. I stumbled upon sites with documentation of features through links in the forum and I could never find it again because it was not reachable from the website (at least I could not find it...). Many things in the Tools section are outdated, I am not sure about the Developers section, some seem to be spam, some probably dont exist anymore etc... But what I think is more important is the lack of a concise documentation for many things. Looking in the forum for information that is 4+ years old does not give confidence to a new user I think (although of course, most of that information is still accurate which speaks for the robustness of the engine, but still... it is all over the place)
So, you probably discussed that a lot already, but I was thinking about possible future directions. These are only thoughts but I would really like to hear your opinions on the topic.
First, it seems that the way the website is built is a heritage of the commercial past of Gideros. Now that it is open-source for some time now, I wonder if the way the information is organized could reflect that. For example, many engines successfully use Github not only for hosting the software but also for documentation. ATM, the wiki there contains only two empty tables of content. Maybe this could become THE central hub for Gideros information. The main advantage is that it would make contributions a lot easier for everyone. The website could be considerably debloated then and information would be easier to find as well (and if it just collections of links). It would probably be easier to add information as well although I dont know how the website is managed ATM. Also, for someone evaluating Gideros it would show the amount of work that is still going into it. From the website you could get the impression that it is almost dead which might deter potential new users.
The main goal would be to make it easier for new users to find and get into the engine which in turn will most likely increase the amount of donations and contributions so profit for all! $-)
This would probably be a large amount of work but I would certainly offer to help (even if the Github idea is not useful) in documenting and collecting information. I am a useless programmer so this could be way for me (and maybe others) to contribute to the development, which I really would like to.
Alright, this is my 2(00) Cents about these things. I hope I did not come across to bold, given I am rather new to the community but I am really enjoying the engine and always wish it would be more accessible... at least I would have made the decision much earlier!
Maybe there are already other plans or ideas floating around that I missed. If so, apologies for adding noise! I would happily jump aboard there of course.
Thanks for reading and sorry for the wall of text!
WARNING: longer text ahead @-)
from the perspective of a relatively new user (i.e. my perspective O:-) ) I wanted to share a few thoughts about Gideros and maybe get your opinion and suggestions on them. First, I tried various engines and frameworks before settling with Gideros and I really like what it offers. I think the balance between structure provided by the engine and openness for your own code is really great. The API is relatively small so it is really easy to actually find your way around. However, to be honest, it took me a little while before deciding to actually invest some time into it. The reason is mainly the way Gideros presents itself to the newcomer. Now that I am here, I realize that the community is rather small and this makes me appreciate the amazing work that the maintainers do even more. However, this probably comes at the expense of the presentation, namely the website and documentation. ATM, it is really difficult for a new user to gather information. I stumbled upon sites with documentation of features through links in the forum and I could never find it again because it was not reachable from the website (at least I could not find it...). Many things in the Tools section are outdated, I am not sure about the Developers section, some seem to be spam, some probably dont exist anymore etc... But what I think is more important is the lack of a concise documentation for many things. Looking in the forum for information that is 4+ years old does not give confidence to a new user I think (although of course, most of that information is still accurate which speaks for the robustness of the engine, but still... it is all over the place)
So, you probably discussed that a lot already, but I was thinking about possible future directions. These are only thoughts but I would really like to hear your opinions on the topic.
First, it seems that the way the website is built is a heritage of the commercial past of Gideros. Now that it is open-source for some time now, I wonder if the way the information is organized could reflect that. For example, many engines successfully use Github not only for hosting the software but also for documentation. ATM, the wiki there contains only two empty tables of content. Maybe this could become THE central hub for Gideros information. The main advantage is that it would make contributions a lot easier for everyone. The website could be considerably debloated then and information would be easier to find as well (and if it just collections of links). It would probably be easier to add information as well although I dont know how the website is managed ATM. Also, for someone evaluating Gideros it would show the amount of work that is still going into it. From the website you could get the impression that it is almost dead which might deter potential new users.
The main goal would be to make it easier for new users to find and get into the engine which in turn will most likely increase the amount of donations and contributions so profit for all! $-)
This would probably be a large amount of work but I would certainly offer to help (even if the Github idea is not useful) in documenting and collecting information. I am a useless programmer so this could be way for me (and maybe others) to contribute to the development, which I really would like to.
Alright, this is my 2(00) Cents about these things. I hope I did not come across to bold, given I am rather new to the community but I am really enjoying the engine and always wish it would be more accessible... at least I would have made the decision much earlier!
Maybe there are already other plans or ideas floating around that I missed. If so, apologies for adding noise! I would happily jump aboard there of course.
Thanks for reading and sorry for the wall of text!
Likes: SinisterSoft, simwhi, talis, totebo, antix, HubertRonald
+1 -1 (+6 / -0 )Share on Facebook
Comments
Likes: antix
Do you have an example of a GitHub project with good documentation hosted there as well?
They have the documentation on Github but also API docs and a forum somewhere else.
Kha does something similar (http://kha.tech) only there is not much there (yet...). Now that I think of it... seems like it is a thing in the Haxe world :-?
Kha also seem to use the same system for their API Reference. I much prefer the simple style as opposed to the current Gideros one which is always collapsing things that I want to go back to
Who is the best person to talk to regarding the website? Is it a WordPress site or is it some custom made thingy?
Likes: stetso
Likes: antix, SinisterSoft, HubertRonald