51dc1d9732
Refer to the CHANGELOG for all info. --------- Co-authored-by: Wouter van Wageningen <wouter.vdub@yahoo.com> Co-authored-by: Josh Munic <jpmunic@gmail.com> Co-authored-by: Jonathan Haas <haasjona@gmail.com>
122 lines
4.7 KiB
Text
122 lines
4.7 KiB
Text
---
|
|
authors: 1
|
|
caption: "I don't drink, but this seemed appropriate for a celebration post ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯"
|
|
date: '2018-08-25'
|
|
intro: 'Celebrating one year of freesewing.org: Announcing the freesewing library'
|
|
title: 'Celebrating one year of freesewing.org: Announcing the freesewing library'
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Exactly one year ago, the doors of freesewing.org swung open for our users,
|
|
while those of makemypattern.com get one of those _we've moved_ signs.
|
|
|
|
<!-- truncate -->
|
|
|
|
Looking back at [that blog post from 12 months ago](/blog/open-for-business),
|
|
it almost beggars belief that the things announced then are only one year old.
|
|
The concept of a draft, the comparison functionality, or even paperless
|
|
patterns. They all celebrate their first birthday today.
|
|
|
|
Not this site though, because [driven by the looming GDPR
|
|
deadline](/blog/gdpr-plan), we dumped our Jekyll based site for a new front end
|
|
sometime in May.
|
|
|
|
## More languages with less languages
|
|
|
|
GDPR was only part of that story. Other reasons for the rewrite were our
|
|
desire to support multiple languages, and to simplify our technology stack.
|
|
|
|
In other words, we wanted to reach people who speak different languages, and
|
|
wanted to limit the number of programming languages required to do so.
|
|
|
|
### More natural languages
|
|
|
|
We've done remarkably well on this front. While you won't find every last bit
|
|
of content translated, this website's main features are now available in five
|
|
languages:
|
|
|
|
- English
|
|
- German
|
|
- Spanish
|
|
- French
|
|
- Dutch
|
|
|
|
Which really is 100% thanks to the great work of our wonderful
|
|
translators.
|
|
|
|
### Less programming languages
|
|
|
|
The switch from Jekyll to a [Nuxt](https://nuxtjs.org/)-based front-end has
|
|
removed [Ruby](https://www.ruby-lang.org/) from our technology stack.
|
|
Freesewing.org now runs on JavaScript, PHP and a little bit of C (which we'll
|
|
ignore for now).
|
|
|
|
But removing programming languages is not a goal _an sich_. Rather, the
|
|
underlying ambition is to simplify things, make it easier for people to get
|
|
involved, and ultimately attract more contributors so that the project can grow
|
|
and flourish.
|
|
|
|
Today, designing/developing patterns is not an insurmountable obstacle. We've
|
|
got [benjamin](/designs/benjamin), [florent](/designs/florent), and
|
|
[sandy](/designs/sandy) to show for it. All of these were contributed by
|
|
people for whom freesewing was initially new, they went through the design
|
|
tutorial, and in the end created a pattern of their own.
|
|
|
|
We'd like more people to follow in their footsteps. So making the process as
|
|
simple as possible is a worthy investment of our time.
|
|
|
|
## Announcing freesewing, the library
|
|
|
|
For the past 2 months, I have taken time off from pattern making and sewing to
|
|
tackle our [technical debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt).
|
|
|
|
Specifically, I've set out to rewrite our core back-end from the ground up in
|
|
JavaScript. But there's a twist. It's no longer a back-end. It's a library you
|
|
can use both in your browser, or on the server with
|
|
[node.js](https://nodejs.org/).
|
|
|
|
It is currently in version 0.10, and feature complete with freesewing core.
|
|
It's [available on GitHub](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing) and
|
|
[NPM](https://www.npmjs.com/package/freesewing), and is fully documented at
|
|
[developer.freesewing.org](https://developer.freesewing.org/).
|
|
|
|
And while its API is richer than core's, it's footprint is actually a lot
|
|
smaller:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Which is good news, in case you were wondering.
|
|
|
|
## What happens next?
|
|
|
|
A lot of work needs to be done before we can actually use this on
|
|
freesewing.org:
|
|
|
|
- All our existing patterns need to be parted to the JS version.
|
|
[Brian](https://github.com/freesewing/brian) is the first pattern to have
|
|
been ported.
|
|
- Rewrite our data back-end in JS. Since this will remove the PHP programming
|
|
language from our stack.
|
|
- Build a new website using the freesewing library and our new data back-end.
|
|
|
|
This really is a lot of work, and while I hope that by the end of the year
|
|
we'll have made good progress, I can't promise it will be done.
|
|
|
|
## But I just want patterns
|
|
|
|
Chances are, all you care about is patterns. What you want is more patterns,
|
|
better patterns, different patterns. And all of this rewriting is not exactly
|
|
pushing your buttons.
|
|
|
|
I get that. I really do. I for one have a list of patterns I'd like to see
|
|
added to the site. And my work on other aspects of the project keeps me from
|
|
adding them.
|
|
|
|
But I believe that investing now in a streamlined developer experience will
|
|
have a knock-on effect in the long term.
|
|
|
|
If we want a few extra patterns, this is not the right approach. But if we want
|
|
a lot more patterns, I believe it is.
|
|
|
|
And I want a lot more patterns.
|