Roadplan for Discourse

#1 By: Kuba, February 12th, 2013 17:31

I hope I didn't miss it somewhere, but what is the current roadplan for Discourse? I know it's too early to ask for a release and that there are many things to do for the core developers. I would just like to know what you guys are working on and what you plan.

Slightly related: What is currently the best way to contribute to this project? Is it bug hunting? Or discussing features here on meta? Or contributing code through pull requests?

#2 By: Jeff Atwood, February 12th, 2013 19:42

At the moment, for the next 4 weeks, the roadplan is what I call "swabbing the deck"..

That is:

Fixing any critical bugs or functionality so badly implemented that Discourse can't be used properly.
Supporting the early Discourse adopters, those setting up test and trial forums, and those contributing code, on GitHub and here in a "teach the teachers" manner, so they can help others in turn.
Making sure our own house is in order so that we can eventually support our 3 partners as outlined on http://www.discourse.org/buy/ sometime later in March.

The only practical advice I can think at the moment of is to avoid attempting to add any major new features, I know we certainly are avoiding any new feature work as we stabilize and test the code base in a public environment! That said, small tweaks, fixes, and refactorings are certainly more than welcome!

We'll have more guidance as we get further in, but for now, we've been happy with the pull requests we've gotten.

#3 By: Julien Gourdon, February 13th, 2013 12:00

Hi Jeff
Does localization enter in your "swabbing the deck" short-term plan?
I'd be glad to help deliver a full French translation before 4 weeks but as I said here:

#4 By: Dan Neumann, February 13th, 2013 15:00

Your post is directly linked to for the search phrase "french translation", btw.

The odds of someone else translating it as we speak are so negligible. If you want more assurance, I guess you could open up an issue for "French translation" and track it with your branch so people can see you're working on it.

#5 By: Jeff Atwood, February 13th, 2013 15:06

Sure, I recommend what @danneu said!

There has been some hubbub over translation being this super-complicated thing, but I don't agree that it is so complicated. Just translate all strings in the English /config/locales/em.yml file to French fr.yml.

If stuff gets added or removed, diff the files using Your Favorite Diff tool!

#6 By: Jeff Lunt, February 13th, 2013 19:43

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works. The complication is in getting a quality translation, not in the technical implementation of showing it to people, thanks to http://guides.rubyonrails.org/v3.1.1/i18n.html

#7 By: Julien Gourdon, February 14th, 2013 02:31

Ok I'll start and keep you posted. I guess we'll need several reviewers in any case.

#8 By: Régis Hanol, February 14th, 2013 13:37

@jgourdon Please keep me in touch, I can review French ;)