Dev:WeeklyMeetingAgenda/2005-03-13th

1)Meeting minutes for external sites Tom Musgrove wanted to know whether it would be acceptable to have the meeting minutes sent to Linux Weekly News. Ton suggested that 'Development Digests' like those that were done on a monthly basis by Nathan Letwory would be more appropriate. Tom volunteered to do start doing the development digests.

2)Requirements for getting code committed in releases Ton felt that 'new functionality in blender all should be in CMS before releases' and preferred it be done either the coders submitting the new functionality, or it being the responsibility of the coders to find someone to do the documentation. A minimal requirement would be a text explanation of what it does and how it works, sample images and screen shots, and a blend file to be used for regression tests. Martin Poirier stated that the documentation needs to be done earlier and not at the last minute, 'so we don't wait for release docs when code is release ready'. Martin also requested that if possible it would also be nice to have video demonstrations of the new functionality in action. For video demonstrations Tom Musgrove suggested wink for usage on windows http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ which can output to flash videos or png (which can then be turned into video with blenders sequencer). Also a brief reminder that developers who have code/projects they are working on should either update the wiki with their projects status http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/ProjectStatusPage or contact Chris Burt or JLuc Peuriere with the status of their code and they will update it for you. Python scripts do not need to be in the project status page, however Ton emphasized that they DO need documentation (the py-doc plus screenshots should usually be adequate.)

3)Current Projects – New Transform According to Martin Poirier the new code has about 90% of the functionality of the old code. Still missing are shrink/fatten, free rotate, 'extrude by vector', and moving the camera in camera view, and assorted api work for exposing constraints, and context. Ton will do pose mode and dependency update related work, and cameragrab. Ton stated that new transform code should should now be the default compile. Emilie Brown will help Martin with the documentation of the new Transform functionality.

4)Current Projects – OpenEXR Ton stated that while supporting an open hidef image format is desirable 'it should be properly wrapped in a C library' and that 'we have to keep all exr dependencies external' - 'it should either work like quicktime, or as static lib'. For now 'OpenEXR goes back to the drawing board, to design a good compiling lib for blender first'.

5)Current Projects – HEMesh Joe Eager states that his HEMesh work is going well and is currently waiting on feedback from JLuc Peuriere on what 'major rewrites' will be needed. Ton queried whether it was ready for conclusion in tuhopuu. It was decided that JLuc will review the code this week and then a decision on suitability for inclusion on tuhopuu will be made at the next meeting.

6)Bug Tracker It was noted that the majority of bug reports in the tracker (or that have been moved to a separate tracker) fall in three categories 1) OpenGL compatibility issues with video accelerator cards both on Linux and Windows 2) Game Engine 3) Python

Python – not much was said regarding the python bug count other than it is of concern to Ton.

OpenGL - For OpenGL issues there is a need for individuals who are capable in OpenGL and who have access to the cards that have problems (ATI on Windows and Linux). Ton stated that OpenGL is 'easy'. Martin Poirier has the OpenGL Redbook on his Amazon.com wishlist (it was pointed out that it can be downloaded in PDF or html format here - http://www.opengl.org/documentation/red_book_1.0/ ) Christ Burt and Emilie Brown will try learning OpenGL to try and contribute in that respect, but other developers are strongly encouraged to do so. (Ton claims it is easier to learn and use than python. Also Blender only uses widely supported OpenGL so just version 1.2 of the API is sufficient)

Game Engine- There is really only one active developer of the game engine, Kester Maddock, and a single part time developer is not sufficient to maintain the game engine. A number of suggestions were made about 'what to do about the game engine problem'. Suggestions ranged from – issue a call for developers, to temporary removal, to complete removal, to potentially integrating a different open source engine. Jens Ole Wund noted that 'i don't see much difference between a good physics driven animation system and a game engine'. Ton believes that Kester needs to be consulted before any decision is made. If separation does happen, sufficient code for doing things like walkthroughs will be kept in the main blender tree.