It’s certainly unusual to have offers to help go ignored. I try to go through every new issue sudmitted on GitHub and skim through the topics here, but I must have missed or forgot to reply to yours. Feel free to DM me links or copies of those messages and I’ll have a look.
Documentation contributions are a bit weird currently. Only certain people are allowed to directly edit RawPedia. Those with access have the freedom to edit anything without review, so only RawTherapee experts with documentation/writing/translation experience and developers are granted access. For everyone else, contributions should be submitted as issues on GitHub.
@Lawrence37: Thanks for the reply. I’ve sent you the details of one of the emails I sent some time back – just for reference.
Regarding helping out with documentation, I completely understand the access process, and that’s no problem at all. My offer to help will always stand; I wouldn’t be able to contribute to coding, unfortunately, but I’m more than willing to assist wherever else I’m capable (documentation just happens to be something I’ve a lot of experience with).
I got your message. Pick anything you want to add, update, or improve. If you need some pointers on which pages need attention, some of the issues with the RawPedia tag are looking for documentation. Here’s a link to the list of all the issues with the tag. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to upload your contributions to RawPedia until I get my access granted.
This discussion is most welcome! From my perspective anything which could help a new user onboard and past the discomfort threshold would be helpful, and showing signs of life on the website would dispel the perception the project is moribund. Adding a page to the website such as “Getting Started With RawTherapee” as a wiki would allow for an evolutionary collaborative process. Update: I should clarify that I am not talking about “official” documentation in rawpedia but rather “unofficial” or “popular” information from users as a page on http://www.rawtherapee.com/… even as I write this I wonder if it can work this way: isn’t content on an official website “official” by default? Then how?
A question for everyone: How often do you want/expect a stable release, and how long after the latest release would you start to wonder if the project is active (assuming you don’t hear any news or follow the development on GitHub).
As for your last question I would suggest a release every year. Preferably, at the very end, in December. This would be the annual “present” for your users.
As regards your specific work, just a question…
Will LibRaw be included in the 5.10 release [1]?
From what I have gathered it should be generally better than Dcraw and more similar to ART.
IMHO the term “stable release” could suggest to cautious users that the development releases are generally unstable. Perhaps it should be more strongly emphasised that this is not the case, instead it is much more about bug fixes and a preview of upcoming features.
I can’t think of a particularly intelligent name for the stable releases either. Maybe “base release” as it is the base for future improvements?
This may be enough for you or for me - but I don’t think that github was planned for billions of RT-users who want take look into the repo to see if there’s something new.
And there might a few - 2 ,3 or 4 - users, who are not interested in the repo - they will open the homepage. Let us take care of minorities.
Please - don’t take it too seriously. I really did not want to offend you. These were my ironic thoughts to your post combined with my opinion.
I thought it would be good for a grin - I’m sorry, that you felt defensive.
No problem at all, and no issue whatsoever. I just didn’t want anyone getting the wrong impression from my reply.
By the way, I think your idea of getting something on the main RT page is a great idea – it’s the first place anyone would go, so it would be the ideal place for it. Good shout!
A new release every year would be nice but I don’t expect one that often. If I hadn’t heard anything a year after the last stable release I would begin to worry about development.
I think putting some development news on the homepage every six months or so would be good for people who don’t come here or look at GitHub.
@Silvio_Grosso Interesting, because I was thinking the best time is at the beginning of the year! I saw a question recently asking about the status of the project. There was concern because the latest release was in 2022. At first thought, that sounds like long time ago, but it was only one year and two months ago! 5.9 was released at the end of November. Regarding LibRaw, that will not be in 5.10. It’s a significant change and there is not enough time to properly test it before the release.
@Sunhillow Right, I should avoid using the term “stable”. In the past, “stable” and “unstable” were used, not necessarily to refer to how the application runs, but mostly because the development version is constantly changing with no guarantee of consistent behavior between builds. The website does not refer to releases as “stable” anymore. We can simply refer to them as releases. The nightly/development builds are not really releases.
@martbetz What would your answer be if you didn’t look at GitHub?
There is another possibility to do minimal changes on the website, but communicate the active development nonetheless:
On top of the homepage, the visitor reads: Download RawTherapee version 5.9 released on November 27, 2022
so a line could be added just after that, mentioning:
or try the development version **** with the latest experimental changes, released on ... You can learn about what we are working on right now here: <link>*
This has the advantage that shows that the project is alive and kicking with active development, motivates a new user to try the software and gives the opportunity to older users find updates etc.
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*This link could lead to a field/page etc where an outline of the current changes/thoughts/plans are outlined without many details. Just to assure the reader to know RT is alive and evolving.
Personally, it wouldn’t concern me a great deal — the current official release (5.9) is all I need, so I’d be happy even if there were no further improvements at all.
Having said this, I would start to worry somewhat if there was no apparent signs of life after an excessively long period (say over three years or so) just in case the version I was using lost compatibility with the latest OS version.
Having said that ‘having said that,’ I think that a more frequent stable release would certainly be the way to go in an ideal world. I think a release once per year would be more than ok for me personally.
I think that a more frequent stable release would certainly be the way to go in an ideal world. I think a release once per year would be more than ok for me personally.