How to contact a certain plugin author?
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How to contact a certain plugin author?
I want to try the HTMLemail plugin but it crashes my version 2.18.0 of MantisBT. How can I submit a bug or get a new version? There *is* a thread on it and I left a comment but there is no traffic so my comment was not seen. I'm not sure why the plugin doesn't work since it was supposedly updated for this version of mantisBT.
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
Possibly an email is listed in the plugin main program in the root of thre plugin directory or in the readme.
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
Concerning this plugin: There was a good reason that I wrote this note https://www.mantisbt.org/bugs/view.php?id=12830#c52501
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
Well atrol, that's okay, however let's face it: the email notices sent to customers are kind of ugly. There's little formatting, notes and information are not in an understandable order, it is extremely difficult to read for ME, let alone a typical non-technical user, and after all these years it appears is still not on the radar to make email templatable or simply just prettier. In a business, software needs to look professional and I'm having a hard time convincing our I.T. folks to switch to this better (in my opinion) product instead of paying tens of thousand$ per year to a lesser, but commercial (and slightly prettier) product.
I've seen this countless times in freeware/shareware products: they are almost always technically better, take less disk space & memory, do much more, yet most are not as "polished" as commercial products. So I apologize for wanting to try anything to make the output look better. I don't know PHP and as the only webmaster for a very large organization I have little time to learn how to write Mantis plugins, unfortunately. I certainly understand that you also don't have the time to do these things (else they'd be done already I'm sure.)
So I'm left in the situation of trying to find something, anything, that looks like it will help me make Mantis output look nicer. And this plugin apparently allows the email output to be configured via templates, which sounds wonderful. I'm okay with making code changes in the main program if they are simple and centered around one area of code or module. When I do updates I install the new version in a different directory, and after a few weeks of testing I do a file timestamp comparison to see which files I've changed in the previous version. Then I run a diff against the changed files, and make the same changes in the new files. Finally I move over the new version into Production.
So if you have any ideas for making output nicer I'm all ears! :-)
I've seen this countless times in freeware/shareware products: they are almost always technically better, take less disk space & memory, do much more, yet most are not as "polished" as commercial products. So I apologize for wanting to try anything to make the output look better. I don't know PHP and as the only webmaster for a very large organization I have little time to learn how to write Mantis plugins, unfortunately. I certainly understand that you also don't have the time to do these things (else they'd be done already I'm sure.)
So I'm left in the situation of trying to find something, anything, that looks like it will help me make Mantis output look nicer. And this plugin apparently allows the email output to be configured via templates, which sounds wonderful. I'm okay with making code changes in the main program if they are simple and centered around one area of code or module. When I do updates I install the new version in a different directory, and after a few weeks of testing I do a file timestamp comparison to see which files I've changed in the previous version. Then I run a diff against the changed files, and make the same changes in the new files. Finally I move over the new version into Production.
So if you have any ideas for making output nicer I'm all ears! :-)
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
@mushu, I fully understand what you are telling, this would be a nice enhancement for Mantis.
I don't need it myself, none of my Mantis users is complaining about ugly email notifications.
I am not able to invest time in it, as it needs quite a lot of time to implement this in a product quality that works for all.
Implementing a quick and dirty solution based on the existing plugin is not a big deal, but is a waste of time concerning Mantis standard.
In best case, it would end in a pull request to the Mantis core, so it would help you and Mantis in long term.
I don't need it myself, none of my Mantis users is complaining about ugly email notifications.
I am not able to invest time in it, as it needs quite a lot of time to implement this in a product quality that works for all.
Implementing a quick and dirty solution based on the existing plugin is not a big deal, but is a waste of time concerning Mantis standard.
Maybe some part of this saved money could be spend to pay a developer to implement what you need.
In best case, it would end in a pull request to the Mantis core, so it would help you and Mantis in long term.
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
Where is the roadmap for future Mantis enhancements kept?
Perhaps making output template-driven could be added to it, so that when any developers touch those affected core modules they can make changes with that in mind. It would make adding the feature easier in the future, perhaps moving email output into its own module or similarly adding new variables and events that can be hooked by plugins? Anything you can do to make this easier to implement would be great. And the truth is, if you show the current emails and the HTMLemail emails to anyone and ask which is nicer, well, we all know the one that would be picked. So saying none of the customers are complaining about output just means that they are not aware it could be better. However I guess there could be people that still use Lynx browser and so they only see text! :-)
Note: I still use Lynx for testing my web apps output for accessibility compliance.
Perhaps making output template-driven could be added to it, so that when any developers touch those affected core modules they can make changes with that in mind. It would make adding the feature easier in the future, perhaps moving email output into its own module or similarly adding new variables and events that can be hooked by plugins? Anything you can do to make this easier to implement would be great. And the truth is, if you show the current emails and the HTMLemail emails to anyone and ask which is nicer, well, we all know the one that would be picked. So saying none of the customers are complaining about output just means that they are not aware it could be better. However I guess there could be people that still use Lynx browser and so they only see text! :-)
Note: I still use Lynx for testing my web apps output for accessibility compliance.
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
https://www.mantisbt.org/bugs/roadmap_page.php
I am not sure if you understood my previous note.
There will not be any change in Mantis just because someone asks for a change.
There must be someone being able to invest time in implementing the change.
There is no company behind Mantis paying for the development.
Sometimes one of the Mantis core developer might start with implementation for whatever reason (fun, wants to learn something, priority, needs it for his own installation, ...)
If your request get's not implement, it does not mean that it does not make sense.
It means just, that no one is able to invest time in implementing it.
If you want something that is urgent for you, you (or some dev you are paying for) have to send a Pull Request on our Github repository https://github.com/mantisbt/mantisbt
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
Okay, thanks for the link. What I see there is only a huge list of bugs that are being fixed. So I'm wondering where the list of future *enhancements* and *features* is located to take a look. otherwise, are you saying that there are no plans to make Mantis better, just to keep it in maintenance mode?
What I was saying, put another way, is that I understand none of you have time to create a template-driven output system right now. It would be nice to add to a list of "future enhancements" however. What makes sense is that if the Mantis developers had such a list to keep in mind when they are touching code in any of the modules, they could add little tiny changes to make future implementation much easier when someone finally *does* have the time to do it.
When I update code in any of my web apps I know what things the users want to eventually be able to do, and even if I can't implement those functions right now, I will make small changes in the code to make it easier for me to do in the future. That's all I was saying.
What I was saying, put another way, is that I understand none of you have time to create a template-driven output system right now. It would be nice to add to a list of "future enhancements" however. What makes sense is that if the Mantis developers had such a list to keep in mind when they are touching code in any of the modules, they could add little tiny changes to make future implementation much easier when someone finally *does* have the time to do it.
When I update code in any of my web apps I know what things the users want to eventually be able to do, and even if I can't implement those functions right now, I will make small changes in the code to make it easier for me to do in the future. That's all I was saying.
Re: How to contact a certain plugin author?
It seems you don't understand the concept of the development process.
This is not a commercial project with paid developers where you could have a clear roadmap.
Mantis IS getting better. Compare what you get now with what you had some years ago.
It's driven by contributors deciding to spent time to enhance it.
You never know what happens. Sometime there s hardly happening anything for weeks, sometimes there are a lot of contributions.