[Bf-committers] meetings for new developers

[GSR]

Hi,
raulf at info.upr.edu.cu (2009-11-20 at 1433.38 -0500):
>   I really like the idea about meettings for new devs, though I feel some
> envy because anything that smell to live, chat, internet is science
> fiction to me :) and that brings me the question about a strong offline
> support:
> 
>    What about a good offline reference, tutorials, even a book (ok, a
> downloadable pdf) something like a Blender Beginers Developer´s Guide?
> 
>   Is there a plan for it in the future?
>   Investing resources in documentation is by no means a waste, and often
> something understimated in the open source world. Hey, a beautifull help
> documentation (for users and developers) is the best marketting resource
> of a software.  The main drawback of a highly dynamic program like
> Blender is that the software evolve much faster than its documentation
> or the features/code/UI change a lot making learning materials rapidly
> obsolete but I guess it represent a defy full of oportunities and not a
> source of problems.
>  If someone want to make a very special contribution to Blender and is not
> a developer I think this could be a good project, he even could
> specilized on Blender official documentation from now on.

You just discovered the root, if there was documentation, the meetings
would not be a big issue, maybe even not needed at all. You are not
the first to ask for it either, some months ago there was another
thread, but it ended with something like "time is limited". But now it
seems time is less of a problem so it can be used for meetings, help
some small group of people and generate raw information.

I am not saying meetings are a bad idea, but I think the focus should
turn 180 and instead of going towards videos and unprocessed logs,
etc, use them to pin point which parts require with more urgency
documentation (or cleanups) and write it. Probably inline as much as
possible (so when coding more things or fixing, updating is also
faster) with any graph or global arch thing outside. Invest time
wisely.

GSR