Joomla! Discussion Forums

Joe,

I would really appreciate you try to keep to the facts before u start spreading discontent.  I can understand that u have problems with how things are run. Everyone is entiteld to have his own opinion and voice that on the forums.

To answer your questions :



The version change to 1.5 hasn't been publicaly announced yet, we only explained on the IRC meeting that we are planning a version change for reasons outlined. This was because a question was raised about it. I don't understand the problems u are creating about this, it isn't official so there is no reason to adjust anything. The version change will be announced openly and in time to make any adjustments before the beta is released.



Priority and tasks list are shared between working groups. Working coordinators are responsible for making sure everyone who is involved in the development has access to all the required information. General information regarding development and continuation of the project is communicated through the developer network and main sites. It's technically impossible to make all info available to everyone; nor has the community ever requested this.



Let me give u the list :

1. My personal forum post of 14 december 2005

I clearly outlined the goals and plans for the next version. I also explained the reason behind not doing a quick release that only features admin internalionalisation. I recap :

The release of 1.1 alpha2 means that we will be feature complete. (we are almost there). After this release we are committing ourselves to the following :

    * 1. We will make sure that the whole API is documented (work on this has already started)
    * 2. We will make sure that backwards compatibility problems are either solved or documented
    * 3. We introduce new developer resources to facilitate 3P developers (developer blog and wiki)
    * 4. We are planning (bi)-weekly developer IRC meetings to give 3 developer a chance to ask questions, give feedback about the changes

The end goal for 1.1 is to present a flexible and powerfull core framework that is fully documented and sets a new standards for all future Joomla! development.  We are very excited about the work done in the past 8 weeks and we hope u guys will feel the same once u have looked at bit deeper.

This post was written 3 months ago, in the mean time we have released a developer network (blog, wiki, forge news, ...) site and a feature complete framework for 1.5 to allow third party developers to start testing their components. We have documented BC issues and personaly worked with many third party developers to make their components compatible. We are currently working very hard to create complete API docs for the framework and we had our first IRC developer meeting a just over a week ago.

Through the main site we made following announcements :

- Joomla! 1.1 — Developer Power, User Excitement
- Joomla! First — A Developer Network Portal Raises Standards
- Week in review blog posts

Still not enough ?



Well Joe u mentioned it so let's talk about it. There are indeed no other *official* international Joomla sites and this will never happen. Official means the project has complete control over these sites. We simply don't want to do this and if we would we don't have the resources available to do it.

However this doesn't mean there is no communiction happening between the international community and the Joomla! project. Recently we have created a 'Working group member lounge' on our forums to be able to more directly contact the many working group members. All the translation partners are also part of the forums and we will use it to more closely communicate with the international community.

We also have a very active translation working group coordinated by David who is working hard in providing the international community with core translations for Joomla! 1.5.

If the intenational community feels more communication is needed the core team is happy to listen to well a formed proposal as how we can make that happen. Just wining about it won't get us anywhere. To me  u are either part of the problem or u are part of the solution. As for me, I'm trying to make good things happen, what about you ?

Johan

Changed 30-03-2006 : verbage changed and personal critism removed

Well said

Its funny - Those of us that have been around for many years (Since before Mambo 4.5 was released, before mambo was even useable as a cms) this thread stinks of repeation. (repeation of the abuse of the core team, not meaning the repeation of changing numbers)  The same things were hurled at the core team before Mambo 4.5 was released, again when Mambo 4.6 was announced (Which never came), when a revised roadmap as released announcing Mambo 4.5.3 (Not released), When Mambo 5 roadmap was published (Never started apart from some playing by team members)

Give the core Joomla team some slack.

The current problem with the Joomla Core Team is the Management of the team is being done by a developer - Jinx - and not a manager (E.g. a Brian Teeman kind of person)  The problem with having a developer at the helm is us types dont know when to stop playing with new tools/technologies/classes etc.  At some point in time a manager type has to steer and put his foot down and say NO MORE additions, only bug fixing and completion.


The above para is NOT a personal attack on Johan/jinx at all! but an observasion on his role rather than him personally

With out the Robert Castley type figure then development just goes on and on and nothing is ever in a finished, feature complete release as many new things are being added all the time the code is never ready for release - but the code and product is FANTASTIC at every point in Time.

Joomla 1.1/1.5 (the code in svn) is fantastic - it could be released with a few hours push - however even this week jinx and others are adding new features and promising to investigate adding even more things.

Sometimes we just have to have SOLID waypoints and SOLID features locks

Changing the version number is a silly mistake right now (my personal opinion) - it should have just been done the night of the release as then the version number and the code would be released at the same time so the version doesnt become vapourware (like Mambo 5 and Joomla 1.1) but it is actually a real version :-) that would have killed all the backchat and abuse of the core team.  Remember they are the ones in leadership and sometimes you just have trust those that you place in leadership.  and sometimes leaders need to keep their mouth shut and just lead and dont give a damn about the negitive few and just live for the possitive thousands.  Darn sermon here - some leaders of churches I know have learnt hard lessons doing things like the core team do them - its all a learning process :-)

I am more than happy for the core team to keep quiet about things longer - to keep more cards close to their chest and to give information when its needed and not before. That is a responsibility of leadership.  A responsibility a lot of people do not understand.

Jinx - all core team members - keep going - you are well appreciated, keep up the GREAT work and dont get discouraged by the vocal few

@PhilTaylor-Prazgod: Grow up! 90's are over. We all know that you and your team were fantastic at that time. But that time has passed.

My post was not about me and "my" team - I guess you failed to READ my post!!

Clearly you dont have a clue - I had never heard of the Internet in the 90's !!!

removed: post

why?  jinx deletes his post addressed to me so my post makes no sense - regular users are not allowed to delete their posts but it seems moderators are allowed to remove their own flame bait making follow up posts out of context

Alright people, let's keep this civil.

--Slixter

Everyone,

Please consider taking a step back, and a deep breath, and cool down.  It's easy for someone to post something on the Internet without really thinking through their words.  It's more likely that one would say something hurtful online than in person.

Just think that when you post something here, you're saying directly in the face of a fellow Joomla friend, sitting across the room from you.  I don't want to stifle discussions (even passionate ones) but name calling and demeaning posts should be considered for deletion in my opinion.

Best to all,
Ryan

I find myself agreeing with Phil, except...


Windows Vista. Used to be called Longhorn. No-one cares what it's called now, because we all know what it will probably do if it ever gets here, thanks to the features being trailled. Even I know that there's a lot of code re-written for it, and I knew that ages ago. And I'm just a user...

Much as I like the visual cue from the Roadmap, I would suggest abandoning it. It creates an expectation that can't be met within it's optimistic timetables. And don't announce version numbers until it goes into alpha - give it a project name. All the 1.0.x series are called sun-something, aren't they? Do something similar with future versions, then give it a version number if you must. 1.1 or 1.5 - it's still only The Next Version.

And it might stop some of the bickering.
Gary

Well considering many of the issues here (versioning for example) were only discussed last week I believe the IRC meeting was...
How much earlier than now could it be mentioned?

As was stated the idea isn't just to get internationalization working but to do it right and correctly so that it doesn't have to be redone yet again when the future systems change.,..

Sure there were bandaid solutions available that would have got it done quicker and those bandaid solutions probably would have stopped working later on when the foundation structure of Joomla was changed to give the other features such as seperation of Logic and Display...

So they took a little longer to do it right instead of just slapping some patchwork function as was done in the past that left us in the mess that the Devs have been trying to clean up since they started!
Internationalization is very important yes but it can't just be done piecemeal since it affects EVERY aspect of the CMS from the backend admin functions to the frontend display...

And it is more important that this internationalization works well and can play nice with the future versions of Joomla as opposed to hacking it into the current system and then having to hack it all again to get it to work with the future framework that is of benefit to ALL users of Joomla not just those who need different languages!

The INTL part needed to be done first and I am fine with waiting for these other features for now but the implementation of it forced an acceleration of changes to the other systems it is going to have to operate with later on...

So they did this work now and we should all be grateful they decided to do it right as opposed to just do it down and dirty because now it won't break when the other advancements are implemented!

Better Late and done right than Early and done again and again and have it break every 6 releases because the code wasn't written with the future in mind!

You can't just seperate these features as if they are islands to themselves since they all interact and must live and work in harmony with each other...
And while Internationalization is a very catchy tune it turned out Joomla needed to be taught how to harmonize with it better before they could both put on the show!

One upgrade forced other upgrades and in the end the product will be much better because they took the time to do it right!

I don't see what everyone is so upset about...Missed deadline, Changed versioning or the fact that you had to wait longer because what you wanted had bigger requirements than you thought it had...

My post was emotional and after personal reconsideration and upon request from the cozimek i decided to remove it. Forgot about the fact that u guys can't remove posts only edit. That happens when u get used to the power u get as a forum admin. Sorry about that, i'll be more carefull in the future.

Anyway, back to coding, enough talk for one day. (week)

No need to appologise :-) you more than most get your fair share of abuse on these forums and I am normally the emotional one :-)

Jinx, Johan, I dont know a lot about you, but one thing I do know.  You, more than anyone else right now are driving Joomla to even greater heights than could ever be imagined.  Whereas Andrew eddie was Mr Mambo (By this I mean Andrew was the one with the technical skills to develop such beauty as the database classes and other core features of Mambo 4.5) you are Mr Joomla and we should all thank you for your excellent refactoring of joomla core code into something of beauty - indeed it is this very foundational work that has been well needed for many years that will keep Joomla being the best cms AND application framework for many years to come.

Galatians 6:9 in the bible says (in phils paraphrased edition) "Dont you dare give up! Dont get discouraged and quit cause at the right time - yes the right time, it will be revealed, if you dont give up, if you dont give in."  -- Maybe we all need to hear this sometimes.

I am continually amazed at what can be done with the current stable release.

I just watched this afternoon's events in horror. I felt powerless and I knew, again, the developers were getting their butts kicked at a time that they need sleep, rest, a chuckle, a pat on the back, help! Not MORE stress.  I know you all know that!

Do you guys see a pattern here? Erupt - Abuse - Diffuse - Erupt - Abuse - Diffuse. Can we throw an "improve" in there? Can we try to raise our thinking to "process"? You know what, guys, people who physically abuse others follow the same pattern "Erupt - Abuse - Diffuse - Erupt - Abuse - Diffuse." And now, all the softer tones but soon again the beatings, followed by what -- come on -- you know the answer.

+++++++++++

I think until 1.5 comes out, we are just going to have to move in parallel fashion.

+++++++++++

Jinx -

You really *have to* protect your developers from here on out. If you want to hold weekly or monthly chats, schedule them at a specific time on a regular basis with your 3rd party providers (or whomever wants to sit in).

But, it would be a very good idea for you not to talk to the community more than necessary until you get 1.5 out unless people are testing or they have very specific upgrade questions or they want to share a really good joke with you. You need to think about that process very carefully. You gotta take care of business and you have to protect yourself and your people from the very real danger of burnout and stress and everything very real and very bad that comes with that.

Someone ELSE on the core needs to connect here, not you. And, not another developer. You need a coordinator to talk to us and to talk to you. Goodbye, Jinx. See you at 1.5. Good luck. May the force be with you; believe it or not everyone here respects you and your team.

+++++++++++

Meanwhile, the rest of us. Each of you honestly have excellent points and you do understand your constituent community and you know what you believe to be right and you need to be vocal and to participate in determining the future of Joomla!

Many of you also have very poor interpersonal and communication skills. You need to work on these skills because it's getting in the way and your roles are changing. You are also coordinators for your constituents. You need to learn to identify specific needs; write requirement statements; negotiate your position without emotion; consider the needs of others -- stuff like that. HIGHER level thinking.

That's what my requests for winks are -- think about your words being handed to people with your own hands. These are people that you really do like and have a lot of respect for. But you are frustrated, or tired, or confused, or mad, and, sometimes you drop into this sort of "prehistoric man brute force shove it down your throat" routine that - man - you gotta admit -- it's just not working. We are not connecting. We are not communicating.

The blame game is also an interesting dynamic. Those of you blaming Joomla! core for not communicating -- YOU are the problem. You have TURNED OVER CONTROL to the core -- then, you complain because they have control. Round and round you go chasing your tail. Stop it. Many of you are just too old for that -- you control your destiny. No one else. If you turn it over to someone, then shut up, you are still controlling it.

Everyone knows the definition of an idiot, right? Ok. This we have to evolve here -- Joomla! is almost a year old -- which one of you pointed out how much the community has grown. Does it make sense to continue operating the same way? Or, is it time to advance? Won't that advancement take some thinking and planning. NO - not core team thinking and planning - END USER COMMUNITY thinking and planning.

What does the community need?  Forget 1.5. That bun is in the oven. That product is on the line. They are spraying finishing coats of paint on it. Leave the developers alone to finish it.

AND - If anyone wants to keep toying around with the whole 1.1 vs 1.5 "major, life threatening, forget about world peace - this is the world's leading problem" issue - do it in the humour forum or start a different thread for those who want to participate in that whatever you want to call it.

We have to move on. We need to be thinking more BROADLY and more about PROCESS and how we gather the pulse of the end user community and we feed those needs into this machine and how that is prioritized and negotiated with the core. And how it is taken to the masses -- first with the early communications and prep work - then with the rollout and demos and training.

Those debates are worth having and that is what Joomla! is missing right now.  And thats why everyone is frustrated. I'll engage in that discussion. Is there anyone else in the end user community who also wants to start laying a blueprint of that process?

I have to say this and I'm sorry if this causes a stir but it would appear some people are treating the devs in a manner as if the Devs actually owe them something....

Maybe the Devs feel they do maybe the users feel by supporting Joomla that the Joomla Devs owe them something...

But I would answer any complainers in this simple way...

How much did you pay these guys to not sleep, stay up all night Not eat regularly and make you one of the best CMS' around even without all the work they haven't released yet under a version number that has no impact on how well it works on your server?

Lets get a grip here folks!

Complaining about what they are doing is not going to inspire anyone to work harder to get the things you want!

Dev team is great and I appreciate where Joomla is going (it looks awesome).  But....

I would suggest that someone on the dev team make a decision / announcement about the version thing soon.  It's been Joomla 1.1 for months and I just looked at a post on the Joomla Developement Blog that is referencing 1.5 while the code shown in the example XML still references 1.1.  The only reason I had a clue is because I was following the post.  This could be become very confusing very quickly and has the potential to make a confusing mountain out of what is really just a simple mole hill.

Edit:  I'm a fan of staying with 1.1 by the way  .

the version thing may be confusing but if you think about it truly shouldn't be confusing to anyone at all!
At worst it would be an issue with support not function! Someone saying 1.1 instead of 1.5
First off if they release it as 1.5 there will be no 1.1 to get confused with...so if anyone says they are having a problem with 1.1 well we will obviously know they mean 1.5 since there will be no V1.1 for it to get confused with...

And Obviously 1.2 will be changed in the roadmap to 1.6 or I say better 2.0

So this whole mess about confusion is really moot...
Might be confusing until the announcement is made but really if you ask me if you can't get your head around a simple change like this you probably also couldn't possibly deal with all the new things 1.5 or 2.0 will likely do either! LOL

It's a version number nothing more...What it does and that it actually does it is what really matters if you ask me.
And these devs have shown time and again that when they release something it works and works well...bugs are a normal part of coding and they quickly get squashed!

Obviously these devs worked really hard and got more into this release that warranted a major jump in the versioning...
But this issue falls far short of the type of thing that happened with Mambo where you had 4.5.3 Alpha called a beta then a 4.5.3 stable quickly followed by a 4.5.3h which is totally confusing since there are 3 versions with the same exact numbering!

Thats not the case here and until they release a 1.5 then a 1.1 I don't see how anyone could confuse 1.5 with something that doesn't exist!

Hornos, as far as I've followed the internationalization, the version you are referring to was internationalized in the way that you could translate all strings in the backend, but there was no UTF-8 support, which excluded all languages that didn't work with the ASCII charset. To include UTF-8, there were many things to do. Not only are there the tables that have to be reset to the proper coding, but in case the user used an old MySQL or PHP, there had to be some compatibility functions that ensured data integrity and such. This took a long time and destroyed the scheduled release for ?november? 2005. This directly affects your work with Joomla and the internationalization!

While the release was allready behind schedule, and since there were modifications to do to acommodate the compatibility functions, the devs have decided to restructure the framework, to make it more flexibel and from a coders point of view, more managable. This new file-structure has the advantage, that you can apply several hacks to your installation by only copying the new file over the old one and your previous hacks are not lost because everything is in one big file. Furthermore is there a big improvement in security, since there are no real global variables there any more. At long last, from a coders point of view, this framework is much easier managable. New functions like ACL can be implemented very easily and the maintenance of this code has much improved. This means that future releases won't need so much time and the code quality is improved.

What does this mean for you as an end-user?
It may seem to you, that you only get the internationalization and the long awaited things like multi-level categories, ACL and such are once again left behind, but with this new framework, the next release is allready clearly visible on the horizon. Allthough I might promise a little bit much, but I would even go as far as saying that we will not have another postponed release like this in the near future.

In this light, I think its feasible to see why 1.1 will become 1.5.

I guess someone forgot to tell Andrew Eddie, Joomla Project Director about the version number change as this article published on 28 March still states 1.1 - or maybe the interview was done a while ago? 

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/s ... 426,00.htm

(To avoid misinterpretation: Read this post as light hearted, I saw the article and chuckled - nothing more)

Man, you are smart. Thanks for that explanation; really clear and helpful.



Phil - you are a boob - and I mean that in the most light hearted way possible. j/k....Amy

Just to avoid misinterpretation:  People have to realize that interviews for articles be they on the web, in print, audio, or film/video may have been conducted days, weeks, and most times even months before the publication of the item.

Also just to avoid misinterpretation: Phil, did you see somewhere an official announcement for 1.5?
I didn't. And AmyStephen is right: You are really a boob and I mean that in the most light hearted way possible.

k - ivo - i appreciate the support but let's not all pile on again - and phil - only reason i say that is now is the time to come together...and i am sure you know and appreciate that and this little tiny bit of humor, right?

Like I sad it was a little light hearted humor - an "in joke" some might say - and once again I get called a boob :-)

Some have forgotten that Joomla is about having fun!

K - I am sorry. 100% me. I was just hoping we'd come in this morning and start fresh and take a breather and move in a positive direction. I just think < for me > it was poor timing.

I am the boob. Please forgive me.
Amy

http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/23/61/

I guess people forgot to read the fine print on that page...
I'll magnify it for those who missed it...

Right under the roadmap it says clearly:

The Calendar should be used as a guide only and is subject to change at any time.

Amy, I don't know what you wanted to say with that, but I like boobs 

Hackwar

P.S.: Lets all be friends and happy life forever after.  No need to blame anything on anybody.

He likes me he really likes me! LOL

Oh wait wrong kind of boob I think...LOL

you made me spit out my soda!!! 

(  make a note: work on word choice.  )

that was hilarious - thank you! i can tell both hackwar and asphyx are fun. smarter than i will ever hope to be, but fun. that is good.

I think I managed to change the subject :-)