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Hello, Douglas!
DGD> We now have 3 places for interaction between the BlackBox community:
DGD> o This mailing list (by OM)
DGD> blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
DGD> o Component Pascal Collection (by Helmut Zinn)
DGD> http://www.zinnamturm.de/
DGD> o BlackBox Component Builder Community (by Alexander Iljin)
DGD> http://community.livejournal.com/blackboxcb/
DGD> How do you see us using your site?
DGD> Do you see others contributing patches to the basic BlackBox system
DGD> or do you have a broader vision?
I'd love to see others contributing patches! I guess, that's the
goal of creating a community.
Let me describe the way I see situation in general.
The CPC is a collection of components and subsystems expanding the
functionality of BlackBox 1.4 with new features. As stated atop the
main page: "All subsystems and modules are using BlackBox 1.4 final
version". So, clearly, this is not the place to publish patches for
version 1.5.
This mailing list is mostly a place to ask a question, seek for
advise or post a complaint.
Currently there is no convenient place where you could:
a) see what's done and what is planned to be done about basic
BlackBox system;
b) report a bug and have a hope that it will be fixed sometime;
c) cooperate with someone irritated by the same bug to find a fix
more quickly;
d) see other bugs reported, discussed and dissected;
e) contribute a patch for everyone to examine, evaluate, test and
comment;
f) see complete history of a given particular bug or question, not
only "RESEND 99" last messages on random topics.
That's what the Community is for. In many respects it is similar to
a mailing list. The main difference is that mailing list is
time-driven, whereas the Community is supposed to be tasks-driven.
Each post to the community is a contribution (either bug report or
a patch) and, at the same time, is a separate topic for discussion.
Posting may be done only by members of the community. I'll grant
membership to anyone who will ask for it. Membership requires
having an active Live Journal account, but it is easy to create and
will cost you nothing.
Commenting is open for anonymous users and does not require an
account. But anonymous users cannot post topics of their own, only
leave comments on existing ones.
I admit that (watching the level of bug-reporting activity in this
list) I don't put much hope in the "community" I created. Currently
it's just a very convenient way of reporting my own activity, while
being open to comments and suggestions.
I myself am eager to use BlackBox for projects I'm paid for. I want
to give up Delphi and work only in BlackBox. I have rather high UI
standards, and finally BlackBox starts behaving like a good UI
platform, not just a big scientific calculator with huge menu bar.
By creating the Community I'm just trying to make it easier to share
information and keep track of it. Even if I'm the only one who will
contribute patches, report bugs or suggest improvements, it's still
worth it.
Returning to your question.
I think, the way I described it, it is more like some sort of a
"broader vision" you mentioned. I mean, not just patches, but
abritrary contributions are welcome. Maybe an entire
Open-Source-like community will be created (this is the maximum
goal).
For example, right now I'm starting a software project in BlackBox.
It should be a program that receives data from a microcontrollers
network through COM-port and displays it in an interpreted form. I
wrote a CommStreams.Stream-based engine to decode and encode data
packets according to the communication protocol. This Saturday I
wanted to attach my protocol engine to a dummy loopback stream to
test whether it can decode what it encoded and vice versa. Suddenly
I realized that:
1) there is no stream-based implementation of CommV24;
2) the existing implementation of CommV24 blocks execution of
BlackBox's main thread while receiving or sending data. For example,
it you have no device attached to COM-port and you happen to call
CommV24.ReadByte, the entire BlackBox will hang infinitely;
3) the existing implementation of CommV24 doesn't keep track of open
ports, so, if you forgot to close a port and lost handle to it, you
won't be able to open it again until BlackBox is restarted.
I've developed a solution of my own. It's just one module
CommV24Async. It's not too big to be a subsystem, and it's not
specific to any subsystem but Comm. Wouldn't it be better to share
it with the rest of you? Maybe someone is facing the same kind of
problem and, as a result, he or she won't have to re-invent this
stuff? Maybe someone's glance at my sources would result in an
improvement suggestion?
There is only one way to find out - share my code and provide
easy means for feedback. That's what I'm going to do. And I welcome
you all to do the same.
That's what the Community is for.
---=====---
Alexander
--- BlackBox
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Received on Sun Sep 17 2006 - 21:18:04 UTC