New DIP73: D Drafting Library

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

>> How could you be sure that after long lonely work the proposal 
>> is worth
>> inclusion?

>No need to be lonely.  You can (and should) have community 
>projects on
>dub.  The dub repository is a distribution mechanism, if you 
>want community
>contribution to a library advertise as such and git er done.  
>With git.
>Until done.

>If it's worth inclusion in phobos, it will rise to the top.

I admire idealists, but in the past few years how many 
independent projects have been adopted by phobos?  Is it the case 
that none of those that were not are essentially at core unworthy 
of adoption, or is it that they need some polishing to be of more 
general use and doing so simply doesn't appeal to the library 
author, whilst others with the skills are less inclined to help 
on a private project?  I don't know the answer, but obviously 
have a tentative assessment.

Since there is so much hidden gold in dub, I wonder if it makes 
sense to ask notable library authors how they might feel about 
adoption of parts of their work into Mars.  What does Adam Ruppe 
think, for example?

> Maybe I'm wrong but there is a big controversy and 
> fragmentation e.g. in
> database and gui domain.

So don't start with databases and guis.  And at least down the 
line consider the possibility that there might not be just one 
option when the needs of the problem domains may be very 
different in spite of apparent superficial technical similarity.

> Moving things towards phobos won't help with fragmentation, 
> will just piss
> those off who disagree.  Better path is to put solutions in dub 
> for people
> to use and abuse, see if one becomes dominant.  Only then look 
> at moving to
> phobos.

If Mars doesn't accomplish its goals then people won't use it and 
all that will have happened is a little wasted effort - but one 
doesn't learn without experimentation, including in the social 
domain.   It just hasn't happened that people mystically converge 
on a solution just because it is in dub, polish the code and 
write documentation for somebody else's code base - possibly 
because someone needs to lead the effort.

> This may lead to competing packages. How would we decide what 
> are the
> "proper" packages.

One might start with exploring what is already out there and 
seeing which authors are agreeable to having their work adopted.  
Making decisions isn't easy in life, and people are going to 
criticize you because not everyone will be happy with the outcome 
- but that isn't a reason not to do something if it is worth 
doing.

> I like the idea of having a 'recommended' section in dub, for 
> those things
> considered by the community to be good.

This is a start, but doesn't address the problem that to be 
useful to a broad audience one needs much more than raw code and 
that the library author may not want to or be good at doing these 
other things.

In response to Craig:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

A democratic book for a democratic age.  But there is an 
extensive literature on the weaknesses of making decisions in 
this manner, and one certainly won't achieve excellence that way. 
  (See Peter Thiel, Linus, Gabriel Tarde, Gustave Le Bon, etc).