134 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
134 lines
6.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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author: "joostdecock"
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caption: "Your new login background for the month of February"
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date: "2018-01-31"
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intro: "This is your monthly roundup of the freesewing news of the last four weeks, and a look at what lies ahead in the next month."
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title: "Monthly roundup - January 2018: Inkscape DPI, version awareness, Bail, and Carlita"
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---
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This is your monthly roundup of the freesewing news of the last four weeks, and a look at what lies ahead in the next month.
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## Looking back at January
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It might be [the record-breaking depressing weather in my neck of the woods
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](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/19/aint-no-sunshine-winter-darkest-europe),
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but I feel like January took a lot out of me. So let's see if we have at least something
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to show for it.
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### The Inkscape default units quandary
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At the start of the year, we rolled out core v1.3.0 to address [issue #204](https://github.com/freesewing/core/issues/204)
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aka the the Inkscape default units quandary.
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It was a bit of an unusual fix because our hand was forced due to upstream changes made by the
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Inkscape developers. In addition, we didn't only have to adapt our code, but also had to backport
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the changes to all your existing drafts.
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If you were blissfully unaware of the whole thing, we wrote a blog post about it:
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[Freesewing core v1.3.0 is out; Comes with fixes so good that we back-ported them to all your drafts](https://joost.freesewing.org/blog/core-v1.3.0-is-out/).
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### Version awareness
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We now keep track of which version of core generated your draft. We roll out fixes and improvements
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all the time. So the drafts you have stored in your profile might be outdated.
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You are now informed about this, both on the draft's page itself and on your list of drafts.
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A simple redraft will upgrade them to the latest version.
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> ##### Long-term vision for versioning
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>
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> This solution is a step up from the previous situation, but it doesn't allow for very
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> granular version control. If you have 10 different Simon drafts stored in your profile, and we
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> bump the core version number because we made a tweak to Carlton, all your drafts are marked
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> as outdated, even though the changes don't impact them.
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>
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> With only a single core version number to depend on, there's no obvious way for us to keep track
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> of what changes impact what pattern.
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>
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> The long-term plan here is to have a core version number and a pattern version number.
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> This way, a version bump in one pattern will not impact other patterns.
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>
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> A version bump in core will still impact all patterns, but there should be far fewer core versions
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> once we take all patterns out of core.
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>
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> The idea is that every pattern will be in its own repository, and we'll use composer to manage them
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> as dependencies.
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>
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> But this is a long-term idea that won't be implemented until after we rewrite core.
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> Yes, that's another long-term idea.
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### Bail for error handling
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In the first half of the month, we tried Rollbar for error handling and reporting.
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While we liked the functionality it provided, we weren't too happy about the possible impact on
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your privacy of sending that kind of data to a third party.
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So, we decided to write our own poor man's rollbar called Bail. Bail is now used in our data
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and core backends, so when things break, we know about it.
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This effort also lead to a 2-week side-quest to write tests for our data backend. All details:
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[Introducing freesewing bail: A poor man's rollbar --- because privacy](/blog/introducing-bail/)
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### Carlita is here
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A couple of days ago, we released the [Carlita Coat](/patterns/carlita),
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the womenswear version of our Carlton coat.
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If you rushed out to get your hands on Carlita, it's good to know that she was released as
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part of core v1.6.0 and we're now at v1.6.3, and that is mostly due to fixes and tweaks in
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Carlton/Carlita.
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If you've got an earlier version of the pattern, please redraft. If you've already printed
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it, perhaps have a look at [the changelog](https://github.com/freesewing/core/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md)
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to figure out what has changed.
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If you check the changelog, you'll also see that we started the month on core v1.2.9 and
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are now running core v1.6.3, so I don't think it's just an idea that it was a busy month.
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## Looking ahead to February
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February is a short month so it's probably best to manage expectations. But here's
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what I have in mind for it:
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### Carlton/Carlita documentation
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Quite frankly, this is like pulling teeth to me, so don't expect it to be finished by the
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end of February, but I should at least have made some progress on the
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documentation for the Carlton and Carlita patterns.
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On a related note, the increasing popularity of this site means I'm a lot more occupied with
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various questions, and small issues that need my attention.
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All that feedback is a good thing
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for it is how we improve things around here. But I do notice that it is becoming increasingly
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difficult to dedicate a larger chunk of time to one specific thing.
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Which is really what you need when tackling larger tasks such as writing documentation
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or designing new patterns.
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I don't really have a solution for that, I'm just making the observation.
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### Maybe a Blake Blazer release
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I have a jacket pattern on my drawing board that's been there since the summer (it's called the Blake Blazer).
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I really should just take out some time to wrap it up and publish it, but
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I've been reluctant to do so because I can't seem to find the time to actually make
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the jacket.
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I've used the pattern before for
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[my refashioners make this year](/blog/the-refashioners-2017/),
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but that's not exactly
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a very representative example.
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I don't think I'll find the time to make a jacket in February, but perhaps a muslin is enough
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to publish it in beta.
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### FOSDEM
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[FOSDEM](http://fosdem.org/) --- the Free and Open Source Developers' European Meeting ---
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is on the first weekend of February in Brussels.
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I'm planning to be there on Sunday, so if you're attending too, let me know or come and say hi.
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