[Bf-committers] Meeting minutes, june 8 & 15

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

I've got a backlog in work here... will restrict the minutes to  
relevant decisions & action points.

- OSX swapbuffers problem:
Apple now admitted that this is a non-standard behaviour, and will  
notify the doc writers.  It means that drawing with  
glDrawBuffer(GL_FRONT) actually happens in the backbuffer. A subsequent  
call to glFlush() then does a swapbuffers instead.
BTW: aglSwapBuffers() isn't a real swap, but pastes the back to front.

- GL_AUX buffers
This works for OSX, but not nicely cross platform. Will be #ifdef for  
OSX only. This solves the bug in the vpaint & faceselect options.

- Still no news on SOLID (collision lib) coming back

- "Themeable" interface
Madprof has looked at different ways to draw the interface, for example:
http://www.madprof.net/working/gradient-4.png
He'll work out a proposal + code how this can be integrated, with nice  
#defines and calls to user-preference variables for all important  
interface elements.
Consensis is about making it available as built-in preset options. Not  
'skins' or 'themes'. Has been passed on to the bf-funboard list as well.

- Translation project
Larstiq has been very busy at work (eeew... maybe he has a privite  
life!), but will pick up the remainder after this week (after june 22).

- New font drawing code
Ton mentioned that the adaptions in the code for "international" turn  
single code lines into a 10 line hard to read chunk. Phase admits it  
can become a simple one-liner again. Just takes work... he'll ask shizu  
and ilay as well.

- Intermediate releases
A debate on naming conventions didn't give consensis. Old naming is to  
add letters (a,b,c). The bf-blender admins can just decide here.
There's still no clear policy who'll decide when to do it...

- Doxyfying code
Should be limited to class/struct definitions and API calls. Not mixed  
within code or structs, not destroying readability of it
Has been briefed & discussed with Casey at the maillist

- Getting Involved page
We need a nice starting page for newbies, to guide them through the  
activities that go on at blender.org, where to find stuff, and how to  
participate.
No volunteers yet, is at Matt's and Ton's list.

- XML Blender support
Phillip gave a report on the status of this. The final goal is to be  
able to switch between XML and binary .blend files for saving and  
loading. The format will be as much X3D compatible as possible.  
Technical design decisions (support for DTD or XSLT) are pending. Most  
probably it will be XSLT (stylesheets).
A first result might be ready in 2 weeks. Philipp then also presents a  
proposal for review here.

- New Mesh (editor) system
Stubenhocker proposed a system like he designed (not coded yet) for  
Moonlight3d in the past. It includes 'history stack'. He'll put this at  
the mailing list
Strubi's project (xmesh, schmender) also caused interest. Unfortunately  
he can't make it open source yet, because it's part of a commercial  
project he does for a company.

- Code reconstruction brainstorm
Especially source/blender/src would need some organization.
Ton thinks over cutting Blender into little pieces, throwing away half  
of it, and assemble again in a more predictable and documented way,  
especially to get something that's easier for (new) coders to find  
their way, easier to get to compiling (makefile, dependencies) and  
which compiles again in under a minute!
There are too many different visions on what is 'good' and not in the  
code. There's the old spaghetti-ton view (1), the game engine c++ view  
(2) the "real engineer" nzc/hans view (3) and the reconstruction  
started by zr (4).
This should be brought back under a single focus again, even when it  
means throwing out large chunks of code (game engine being a candidate).
Then a quite lengthy theoretical debate started on how exaclty this new  
organization could be. Interesting to take into account. However,  
feasibility & short track planning has preference as well. Let's wait  
for real proposals to chew on!

-Ton-


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--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org