[Xastir-dev] Topic: Functional Requirements, Xastir-NG

[Curt, WE7U]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, Tom Russo wrote:

> Proper OO design begins with study of use cases and requirements capture.
> 
> > What are we trying to accomplish,  why isn't Xastir good enough?
> 
> Xastir has become unmaintainable due to years of creeping featurism.  The
> Motif library on which it is based is archaic, and the GUI features are too
> deeply entangled with the functional core (due to they way it was written) to 
> be teased apart enough to replace the GUI tool kit.  And yes, the portability
> issue is a big one -- it is too tied to X11, making it difficult (almost
> impossible) to port to non-X11 platforms.

Great answer.  The minimum answer would be something like:  "To fix
existing problems plus gain additional major features which would
require no less than a rewrite of the code."

Use cases are great.  Lists of "I'd like this feature too" are not
so great, as we get tangled up in an ever-increasing list of items
that we'll never be able to support.  That's basically the direction
that EVERY SINGLE DISCUSSION ABOUT XASTIR-2 has taken since the
beginning of time.  Sorry for shouting...  We go through this about
once a year, usually in the spring.  Nothing ever comes of the
feature-list method.  I'm sure I still have all or most of those
e-mails on my hard drive should I ever wish to construct the biggest
feature list ever.  ;-)

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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