SignWriter Java Open-Source Effort

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
June 1st, 2003

Dan Parvaz wrote:
> Why not make this an Open Source effort? You could still be the final
> arbiter of what is "officially" included in SW, but you would have at
> your disposal an army of people who would love to make improvements to
> this. I'd love to join such an effort, whereas I'm too overcommitted to
> taking on "programming hero" tasks by myself. I'm sure lots of others
> feel the same. What do you think?


Hello Everyone and Dan!
OK. We will call it SignWriter Java and I will change the name in my
document and on my web site...

Thanks for this suggestion about Open-Source...Actually I want to thank
Greg Noel, a UNIX programmer, who was the first to suggest to me, to
open SignWriter Java into the Open-Source Effort...soooo I think it is
a great idea...maybe now is the time?

Because I do not have any programmer of SignWriter Java to answer the
questions that might result, I did not know, back when Greg suggested
it several years ago, if I could handle the major increase of stress on
me...I am not even sure what source code is the right code, since there
have been so many versions that is has become confusing for me as
well...

So the code is messy, and the programmers will have one big
obstacle...that the working code can convert SignWriter 4.4 documents,
and that literally hundreds of people are using SignWriter DOS, so
converting those documents is essential and that is why I cannot just
throw out the code and start from scratch...and that is not very fun,
sometimes, because it is much more fun to start your own project,
rather than working with someone else's messy code!

So...if you are game...can you be the leader of the SignWriter Java
Open-Source Effort, Dan? If someone, or a group of you, are willing to
help me fend off the large onslaught of email...I can prepare a little
document, listing the problems we are having, and the goals that were
never realized...and I can bundle that with the source code, messy and
all, and post that for download on my web site...I can then tell you
when it is posted, and you all can download it to see if it is clear?
Then I would leave it to you, Dan, to post it on the Open-Source web
site?

How does this sound, Greg, Dan, Daniel, Angus, Bill....?

Val ;-)