Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pacbell!att!cbnews!wbt
From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Filtering the source/binaries without bottleneck
Message-ID: <3103@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 13 Jan 89 18:32:34 GMT
References: <34235@bbn.COM> <10428@gryphon.COM> <14519@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 51

In article <14519@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>In article <10428@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
>...
>|Soooo, as much as we'd all like to see huge aniumations appear
>|every day, we're just gonna have to accept the fact that this
>|will not be; at least in this incarnation of USENET.
>...
>|And as for testing, vs. delays, I think I for one would
>|rather have then stuff NOW, with minimal testing, rather
>|than wait 3 months for the next file to burp up. And after
>|all, if it's not well tested and has bugs, one of you 
>|people will generally have reported that fact long before
>|*I* find it out :-)
>
>I second the motion: no animations, no testing. We want the stuff NOW!
>Great job so far, Bob.

First, I have to agree; no animations. They're just too darned big.

Maybe someone would volunteer to set up an animation mailing-list,
though. I don't that that would be offensive to anyone, would it ?

As for testing; no, I don't think it's reasonable to ask Bob to go 
line-by-line through the code looking for Trojan Hearses.  But certainly
I'd like to see someone at least test the code to see if it *does*
something.

The recent animations were a case in point.  After spending quite some time
downloading and unpacking the things, I found they only worked on PAL
Amigas.  It wouldn't have taken much testing to determine that, and a 
one-line note in the posting would have save lots of people the effort.

Moreover, not everything has to be tested. If Leo Schwab submits a screen 
hack, I'm willing to believe that it works. Likewise, one of Matt Dillon's
projects is virtually guaranteed to perform as specified.  From what I've
seen, most of the submissions come from a reputable group of programmers.
It's just the occasional "Nifty.Neato" submitted by "Ima Pseudonym", with
the description "Try this, you'll like it !" that needs closer attention.

Anyway, Bob, do what you feel is right, and what you can afford the time to
do.  I support you 99.9%  (.1% taken off for the Italian anims... let that
be a lesson to you ! 8-)



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Bill Thacker						att!cbnews!wbt
	"C" combines the power of assembly language with the
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Disclaimer: Farg 'em if they can't take a joke !
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