[[title

  Tom's Work Diary (November 2004)

]]

[[blockquote
  //\*^<<<"December 2004 `-->'" -- ./diary-2004-12.html>>>^*\//
]]



[[cartouche

  /`Tue Nov 30 09:26 2004'/

  I've written a draft of a spec for a large foundational part of
  `libarch' for `tla-2.0'.   It's a kind of generalization of
  `libawk' in the current `tla-1.x'.

  <./web/communications/tla-2.0-data.html>

  /`Tue Nov 30 09:30 2004'/

  \// Today's goals //\

    * Visit the DMV this week

    * DEAL WITH THE FSF COPYRIGHT ASSIGNMENT PAPERWORK

    * DON'T FORGET ABOUT `ARCH 1.3PRE3'

    * PUBLISH VARIOUS "OWED" DOCUMENTS

    * MAKE A MIRROR OF `LORD@EMF.NET--2002' AVAILABLE
      SOMEWHERE WHERE JBLACK CAN SNARF IT.

]]

[[cartouche

  /Thursday was a national holiday in the U.S./

]]


[[cartouche

  /`Wed Nov 24 2004'/

  \// Today's goals //\

    * Give up on visit the DMV until next week

    * Deal with the FSF copyright assignment paperwork

    * Don't forget about `Arch 1.3pre3'

    * Publish various "owed" documents


  /Wed Nov 24 10:49 2004/

  Here are some notes about <"rewriting arch for tla 2.0" -- 
  $/web/communications/rewriting-arch.html>

  /Wed Nov 24 08:45 2004/

  Here is my first "programmer's blog success story.".

  Below, I publish a link called <"What's on Tom's radar?" --
  $/radar.html>.   The idea is that if 
  you are waiting with baited breath for me to get back to 
  you on some topic or make progress on some project, but you
  don't see it listed there, or don't like the way it's listed
  there, then you know we've had some kind of "disconnect".

  Earlier, on that page, I wrote:
  
  [[cartouche
      Lots of people, from lots of different perspectives, want *"windows
      support"*.

      The catch is that I have to say: *What the heck to you mean,
      specifically, by ^Windows support^, eh?*
  ]]

  As a result of that being on my /radar/ page, someone read it
  and answered my questions.   I have a much clearer idea
  now and I've started to address that in <"plans for tla-2.0" -- 
  $/tla-2.0.html>.



]]


[[cartouche

  /`Tue Nov 23 08:57 2004'/

  \// Today's goals //\

    * Visit the DMV

    * Deal with the FSF copyright assignment paperwork

    * Don't forget about `Arch 1.3pre3'

    * Do additional improvisational "programmer's blog" hacking 

  
  Here's a brief report about today's cool new /programmer's blog/
  feature:

  I want to get out of having to constantly explain every little thing
  that I do as a programmer, again and again, to several different
  people and groups.  I have to report my progress to the guy who
  signs my checks; I have to report my progress to the guy I'm
  supposedly supervising; I have to (at least informally) report my
  progress to the core group of hackers who contribute the most to
  arch;  I have to report my progress to the Arch community as a whole
  and even, from time to time, to the FSF.

  Things can quickly get out of hand to the point where I spend all of
  my time /talking about progress/ and none of my time /actually
  making progress/.

  Wouldn't it be nice if, with less work, I could produce a legible,
  informative journal of my actual progress -- mostly just as a side
  effect of taking steps like writing careful `commit' log messages -- 
  and just point all of the people and groups I'm supposed to report
  to at my journal?   *"See of yourself"*, I can say, **"it's all 
  documented right *there*."**

  One small but significant aspect of my work is that I'm working on 
  some *contribution branches* for the GNU Arch mainlines.   A
  contribution branch is a branch of the mainline, containing just
  one set of changes.   The idea is that the upstream mainline
  maintainer can merge or not merge a contribution branch as a unit:
  it's thumbs up or down -- all the changes on the branch or none.

  It's a chore, sure, for a contributor (like me) to have to prepare
  a contribution branch --- but it's a chore that pays off.   It
  encourages clearer thinking about keeping the mainline in the state
  of monotonically increasing quality accomplished by clean, isolated, 
  meaningful change steps.

  So, how is my progress on preparing contribution branches for the
  GNU mainline?

  Taking advantage of the structure of `gtla', I wrote a tiny 
  <"shell script" -- ../gnu-arch/reports/contrib-summary.sh>
  (I hope your browser manages to show that as text rather than trying
  to execute it!).  

  That shell script is a trivial *report generator*.   It produces,
  as output, what I think is fairly human-readable 
  <"plain text output" -- ../gnu-arch/reports/contrib-summary.txt>

  The strange asci-art conventions in the plain-text report are, of 
  course, /Awiki/ syntax.   The report translates trivially to a 
  not-so-shabby web page like this <"summary of my pending
  contribution branches" -- ../gnu-arch/reports/contrib-summary.html>
]]



[[cartouche

  /Mon Nov 22 12:44 2004/

  \// Today's goals //\

    *Make `Arch 1.3pre2' more widely available -- * put it on the GNU FTP 
      site and announce on freshmeat.

    *Do lots of hacking on my "programmer's blog" --* Lot's of
      longer term objectives are now focused on this task including:
      improving the process for maintaining the GNU Mainline;  
      increasing the transparency of what I do as project maintainer;
      making and keeping available various interesting technical
      memos;  experimenting with new features for Arch;  experimenting
      with the parser I hope to use for XL;  and on and on.   

  
  \// Developments //\

    In fact, `1.3pre2' was quickly noticed to have a nasty regression
    and `1.3pre3' was produced.   So, later this week I'll make
    `1.3pre3' more widely available instead.

    Indeed, I've made lots of progress on Awiki and the programmer's
    blog, not least rapidly filling out many pages on this site,
    including quickly converting some older writings to the Awiki
    syntax.

    /*Life interferes,*/ of course.   I have to spend about 4 hours
    today making my mostly-idle car street-legal again, lest it be
    towed away and sold to some lowlife more needy than me.   This
    involves, among other things, a trip to the DMV to replace a 
    license plate that seems to have disappeared.  I look forward to 
    the day (if ever) when all of my poverty-related civic-procedure
    glitches are well behind me --- one hard part about not having 
    enough money is it *the resulting hassles take too much time* 
    and *there is no way to avoid the hassles*.   Meanwhile -- I'm
    still months behind on two personal (as opposed to commercial)
    debts incurred during the leanest months of busking:  that's 
    a hard part about not having enough money but starting to recover 
    from that -- I feel like an ass towards those I'm still putting
    off for "tactical" reasons.

]]



[[null

  ; arch-tag: Tom Lord Mon Nov 22 12:44:28 2004 (communications/diary.txt)

]]
