new SI1452 keyboard layout

[Shachar Shemesh]

On 13/01/11 10:52, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> Hi
>
> So I set up a small git repo with the xkb mapping and put my changes
> in a branch:
>
> http://gitorious.org/si1452-xkb/si1452-xkb/commits/tzafrir
>
>    
Hi Tzafrir, as well as anyone else who want to pursue this development 
independently.

I think the community is having a hard time wrapping its head around a 
fundamental fact of the new keyboard standard. This is not an open 
source project. This is a committee. It is manned by people who are all 
with the best of intentions, and the discussion is surprisingly 
ego-free, and yet, this is still a committee, with all the negative 
association that go with that word. I'm doing my best to make the 
process open, but I'm beginning to ask myself whether I'm not, actually, 
causing more damage than good.

In the end, the SII will issue a standard. Like it or not, this is what 
will get implemented on most computers out there. Ideally, this standard 
is what will get implemented on ALL computers out there. As such, I 
think it is best to try and make sure that this standard is as good as 
we can make it.

However, since this is a committee standard, it takes time. The 
committee meets once a month, and for a few hours at a time (next 
meeting is tomorrow). There is so much progress we can make during one 
meeting (hence the lack of maqaf, gershaim, and other characters that 
exist in lyx but not in the current version of the draft). I completely 
understand people's impatience, but this is just how things are. It will 
likely take AT LEAST three more months to completely agree upon the 
keyboard, and AT LEAST one more month for the standard to reach the 
point where it is officially published to the public to receive 
comments. It is no news to me that, for an open source project, that 
speed is a crawl. There is positively nothing anyone can do about it, as 
far as I can tell.

Creating forks and branches may lead to one of two outcomes, as far as I 
can see, neither desirable. The least bad outcome is that no-one will 
use your repo, and you would have wasted time and effort. The worst 
case, however, is that your repo is widely successful, but incompatible 
with the end standard. As such, I think it is best to keep the feedback 
flowing where the SII sub-committee can pick it up.

Thankfully, Hamakor has a couple of representatives at the committee, 
and one of them (yours truly) did his best to make the process as 
transparent as possible. The best way to get your feedback considered by 
the committee (before reaching the public comments stage, that is) is by 
reading all the comments on the blog post Tzafrir pointed to, and then, 
if what you said is not redundant to what was already said, leave a 
comment with it. I think it is the only sane way to make sure your 
comments actually get considered by the standard while it is being drafted.

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com