Re: Join Specto project

[Jeff Fortin]

> Hi Jeff,
> I am Angshuman. I have been using specto for quiet sometime. I needed
> some application that can monitor websites.
> Honestly I am very disappointed with [Specto]. I found that it
> consumes huge memory and its usability is also not comfortable.

Agreed on the memory problem; there's actually a bug report that I filed
about that nearly two years ago:
http://code.google.com/p/specto/issues/detail?id=236
...But I don't have the knowledge/skills to figure out why it is using
so much memory. Help is welcome

The user interface needs to be redesigned so that it is more
space-efficient. I have some ideas on this, but it requires someone to
implement it, and that implies some knowledge of PyGTK (the Python
bindings for GTK+), so it depends if you're already familiar with GTK or
not.

> I got the source code and found it is coded using python. I know
> nothing about it. I know Java, C/C++. But never coded on Linux.
> Nevertheless i still want to get involved with this project to help
> myself and everybody else.
>
> So would you let me work on this project with you?

Of course! Any help is much appreciated! (I can't maintain this alone;
in case you hadn't seen:
http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2010/10/22/adopt-a-specto/ )

Coming from a Java/C++ background, Python should be quite easy to pick
up. If you haven't heard of it, you may be interested in the following
(free) eBook. It's a bit old now, but could come in handy:
http://diveintopython.org/
python.org also has very good documentation/tutorials.

Have you got the code through our version control system (to make sure
you have the latest code)? You can get it with this command:

bzr branch lp:specto

And then you'd be able to work directly into that folder, "bzr commit"
your changes, and eventually "bzr push" them onto your own launchpad
branch... when your contributions are ready, we would be able to review
them and merge them into the main branch. We've done this quite often
already: https://code.launchpad.net/specto?field.lifecycle=MERGED

As you can see, this decentralized workflow allows you to grab the code,
make your own branch(es) and start working directly; no special
permissions are required.