Re: 1.4 updates

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

There's been a discussion under this subject line on gnome-doc-list
about documentation and what should go in the section we put in about
"written by... report bugs to.." for both app and docs. (Find it on
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2000-October/thread.html)

At the moment, we put the maintainer's name and http://bugs.gnome.org
in for things, unless the maintainer has said "direct to me" or "send
to the app's mailing list".

Someone suggested that there might be situations where something
different (in this instance, the vendor) would be better. Since this 
then started getting into bug-handling and where they should go 
(initially) and how they progress elsewhere, I'm cc'ing this to 
gnome-devel-list and suggesting follow-ups go there.

On Fri, Oct 06, 2000 at 04:02:22PM -0500 or thereabouts, Dan Mueth wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 06, 2000 at 10:56:32AM +0100, John Sheehan Sun Microsystems Ireland wrote:
> > > Definitely users should have a facility to give feedback to the 
> > > developers. But bug-reports and product support can have a channel 
> > > other than directly back to the developers.
> > 
> > I am not saying this is a bad idea. I am just saying that it is not to
> > us - doc writers - to decide this; I'd like to see this discussed by
> > developers/maintainers before we start implementing this. 
> > 
> > Yes, I understand that any company can change the feedback addresses
> > in the docs they ship without asking anyone's permission - this is
> > what FDL is about...
> 
> As Sasha points out, somebody at Sun should post a message to
> gnome-devel-list or gnome-hackers proposing how bugs should be handled so
> that a mutually agreed-upon solution can be sought.

Another reason to post to gnome-devel-list is that it's had 
several discussions about "improving the bug-tracking system" there.
There are periodic suggestions of overhauling it vastly. A common theme 
is "install bugzilla". I personally loathe this from a user point of view 
for several reasons, but developers much prefer it. Adding this "we should
think about where various things end up -- or end up in the first
instance" point to the mix is probably worth doing -before- anyone
makes any decisions. :) 

When it comes to filing bugs, I suspect that often it comes down to 
"what the user has used before". If they are used to filing all bugs 
with the vendor, they'll keep doing that. If they are used to grepping 
the /usr/(share/)doc/directory for the relevant MAINTAINERS entry and 
emailing them, they'll keep doing that. And most people, of course,
won't do anything with them at all... 

Telsa