[Feature Proposal]: TriangleMesh - Vertex Color Support

[Michael Strauß]

Just a comment about the culture of the OpenJFX project, which you
seem to be struggling with:

>From my experience, this project is usually quite democratic in its
processes. The features and enhancements that successfully make it
into JFX start with a discussion on the mailing list. This is where
you gather buy-in from other developers (if no one is interested in
your proposed enhancement, you're in a tough spot). Don't worry too
much about formal processes, it's about community support at this
stage. Get other people to be excited about your enhancement, and
hopefully some will find the time to look at the design and your
implementation. Some proposals build up inertia and move forward,
others end up dying due to a lack of interest.

3D graphics in JavaFX is a bit of a niche feature (and vertex colors
is even more niche), which is probably why the response to your
proposal is a bit slow. That being said, I'll take a closer look at
your proposal during the weekend.



On Fri, Sep 13, 2024 at 4:59 AM Knee Snap <kneester77 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Nir! No worries about being busy, my concern was when I didn't get replies to my questions about what I should be doing and procedural questions. But, it seems maybe I wasn't super clear about my questions since you aren't sure what they were.
> I also went through many days waiting for responses about expectations all while he was replying quickly to other emails, seemingly ignoring mine. I'm not suggesting he's done anything wrong, I can imagine perfectly good reasons for not having replied, but my questions were related to the contribution guidelines and expectations. So I've felt like I've been going foward without clear expectations of both myself and contributors, and like I wasn't even guaranteed a response at all. The only reference I had for how long I should expect to wait was based on the other emails I saw, which had fast replies. I'm hoping to clarify my responsibilities and expectations, and what I should expect from contributors, since there's a lot of stuff to get familiar with in the contribution guide, and it's my first time contributing. Due to that, it felt like those questions went mostly ignored and it wasn't a matter of being busy, as other emails were getting quick replies, though perhaps I didn't phrase them clearly. Hoping to now clear up my confusions about responsibilities. Your email has helped reassure me that I was not getting ignored, but instead just had a lower priority or something else that could cause it to take longer to get a reply.
>
> Overall, I'd like to give some insight into what it has felt like for me to contribute to JavaFX for my first time. The contribution guide is good, but it hasn't been enough.
> This isn't here to point blame or to criticize, but instead give some perspective into my experience here and why this has been such a frustrating experience. Perhaps this will help improve the contribution experience for newcomers like me going forward keeping this in mind, but ideally it'll help set the stage for why I am so confused and help you guys resolve my confusions.
>  -> The contribution guide misled me in many ways here, and there are many questions I still do not have an answer to.
>  -> To start off, it said to include a feature proposal, and it gave suggestions for various things to include.
>  -> So, I wrote a long feature proposal email and sent it off.  For a week I had a discussion with a contributor where we hashed out different design choices, I felt like we had appropriately discussed everything which had been discussed adequately, and was ready to get my feature proposal approved by Kevin.
>  -> Everything was going great until one week in when Kevin replied and said he "would need to be convinced that multiple applications would benefit from such a feature, and that your proposed solution -- as documented and exposed by the public API -- is the best way to go."
>  -> He also asked if I had read the contribution guide, implying he didn't think what I had previously sent wasn't me 1:1 following the contribution guide.
>  -> I still don't understand why he sent that, I believe I presented exactly what the contribution guide wanted. There were a handful of things that got missed, but each were discussed in the email thread.
>  -> Did he not read the proposal and assume I did it wrong? Did he read it and think it wasn't convincing? Did he want a new proposal which included the things which had been discussed in the email thread?
>  -> So, with this confusion I asked for clarification as well as other questions relating to Metal like who was working on it, if I could have a contact for them, etc.
>  -> Never got a reply! Okay, so what the heck am I supposed to do here? Kevin asked for new a feature proposal, and I guess for some inexplicable reason this one wasn't good enough? It doesn't seem like he even realized this was a feature proposal, but either way, he asked for a new one, so I'll make a new one.
>  -> After looking at other feature proposals, I retooled my proposal and come up with something I was happy with, which I felt went above/beyond what was necessary. I've even prototyped an implementation which works that I can use to get a screenshot for the proposal, and to ensure my opinions of the design didn't change even after seeing it in practice.
>  -> During this time Kevin even helped me sort out an issue building JavaFX, so here I am thinking that I've been given the green light to present a final feature proposal with all of my changes, and Kevin will review it.
>  -> So, after finalizing a new proposal, I'm feeling good. I've expanded the proposal significantly, and it's now in a Git repository, which is what other contributors have been doing.
>  -> I'd like to give everyone a chance to review the updated proposal, who knows maybe there could be something I missed. Then, I'll pass it off to Kevin.
>  -> There's some discussion and Kevin even chimes in at one point. After a few days when there's no more discussion, I send out an email saying I'm reading to pass it off to Kevin for review.
>  -> Then, I don't get a reply. After a little bit, I start to get very concerned since I see him actively replying to other emails, and he's still never touched the original email I sent asking him for clarification, and follow-up questions.
>  -> At this point it's been almost 3 weeks since his confusing email, and I still have no clarification, and I've spent quite a lot of effort on this. The questions from before have come back. Did he even read my initial feature proposal? What if all this time he had just not read the original one? I've got 3 weeks since an email which is still waiting for a reply from him and I've just not heard anything. Not even an indication he plans to reply but is busy. I have no idea what's normal/what I should expect, but I can't even ask for clarification on that.
>
> So, at this point I've lost track. I have no idea where I am in the contribution process, none of my questions have been answered, and the only outcome I see happening right now is that this proposal is lost & forgotten.
> I don't know what else on the guide I can do, nor does it feel like Kevin is bothering to answer important questions, let alone review it.
> I completely understand the slowness, it's an open source project after all, no less a very mature one which tries to avoid all changes to public APIs. My frustration has mainly been that I believe I've been asking questions that take little effort to reply to, but are getting ignored while I see him actively replying to other threads. Perhaps my emails are too long and contain so much detail that the questions don't immediately pop out, and thus they get missed. But at this point it feels more like I'm getting ignored for an unknown reason.
> If I had some sort of confirmation that it's normal for low-priority emails to sit a bit, but that Kevin WILL eventually get to it, this would go a LONG way.
>
> But from this I've learned that I need to be extremely explicit with my questions. So here are the questions I'd like answered (Some of these I hadn't asked earlier, others have gotten lost):
> 1) Eg: I either want an explanation of the workflow for Metal. How I will be including vertex colors (a feature which hasn't officially been merged yet!!) in Metal, or will I wait until vertex colors are officially merged before adding support to Metal? I'm fine with either, I just want the process laid out for me.
>  -> I know Metal support is getting done by Oracle, but I think you guys can still provide input to this question. (I will also be asking them, if I can get contact info for them)
>  -> The Metal Pipeline doesn't strike me as being very close to being finished, so it feels like vertex colors can be merged before them. If that is the case, I'd like to have vertex colors merged without Metal support, then at that point I can add vertex color support to Metal, as this is the clearest path that I see to avoiding conflicts between 3 different repositories.
>  -> I see this as a very conservative approach though, and it's my proposal because I'm not familiar with JavaFX contribution workflow yet. I'd like to hear feedback from others on how they suggest I handle this.
> 2) Where can I get contact info for those who are working on Metal support? Looking for a lead or someone prominent.
>  -> I mentioned several questions regarding Metal support, but I think the best people to answer them will be the people actually working on the Metal support. So a contact should be enough.
> 3) Can I get some clarification on expectations for contribution?
>  -> From the contribution guide, my understanding is that the current thing I'm waiting on is for design approval (on the feature proposal) from Kevin.
>  -> But, I think I'm OK to seek out feedback on my PR as well, which I've recently realized already has a JBS Bug ID (or I think that's what it is? It's got an entry on at least one of the multiple web portals I've seen which track issues.)
>  -> 3a) How long does it generally take to get responses on low priority feature proposals? I have no reference for what to temper my expectations against, which would help me a lot. Should I expect it to take a week before Kevin weighs in? Two weeks? One month? 6 months? One year? I've seen projects with response times covering the whole spectrum, and I just don't know where to set my expectations for when it is appropriate to follow-up on an email which hasn't gotten a reply.
>  -> 3b) Every single other recent active PR besides mine has had a review comment from at least one other person, including ones created after mine. How should I interpret this besides me having done something wrong? At what point should I ask for a follow-up and for people to review it if I don't hear back from anyone?
> 4) How long should I expect before my OCA signature is reviewed? I submitted it around 2 weeks ago at this point, and I don't think it's been reviewed yet, which is significantly longer than the website stated it would take.
>  -> We're also beyond the timeframe that the JFX repository said it would take.
>  -> Also, nobody has commented on my PR to run the expected commands whereas other PRs uploaded later have ~25 comments. Why is this? Is it due to low priority? Is it due to the 3D rendering system having fewer people working on it?
> 5) Why does the Direct3D 3D pipeline appear to use fixed vertex buffer definitions in the D3D calls, as opposed to making a more modern vertex buffer definition?
>  -> The 2D pipeline uses the more modern vertex buffer definitions, but the 3D pipeline uses an FVF definition, which means many non-texCoord values are marked as texCoords in the shaders. (I don't know if that's necessary, but it seems weird to me).
>  -> My best guess for this is there was some kind of compatibility consideration, but I haven't been able to find any information on it. Does anyone (maybe you) know why it's done as an FVF declaration instead of a vertex declaration?
> 6) Why was your PR for #1281 not labelled as a draft PR or WIP? If I follow the contribution guidelines, I think it should be labelled as a draft? Hoping for some clarification.
> 7) Do you mind sending out a reply to the original thread so I am able to reply to it instead of violating the contribution guidelines? Thanks!
>  -> What I was hoping for PR #1281 was that since I joined the mailing list recently, while I can read the previous emails in the archive, I have no way to reply to pre-existing threads, as they're not in my inbox. I'd have to start a new email thread which the contributing guidelines say explicitly not to do.
> 8) Where am I currently in the contribution guide? What is the next steps? What is expected from me?
> 9) What is some reasonable criteria for me to use.
>  -> 9a) If I send out a proposal for design discussion, how long should I wait from the last email before sending it to Kevin
>  -> 9b) If I send out a feature proposal to Kevin for approval, how long should I wait before following up with Kevin if I don't hear back?
>  -> 9c) If I send out a PR/Draft PR, how long after receiving no feedback should I wait before following up?
>
> Thanks again! I really appreciate JavaFX contributors and I want to make it clear that I'm not taking any of this for granted. I just am very confused and feel like the documentation has left me in a situation where I'm just utterly confused and don't know what's going on, and haven't been getting my questions answered.
> In retrospect, I definitely didn't make these questions anywhere near clear enough, so I can understand why they were missed. So ideally this email can serve as both a way for me to clear up my confusion, but also to improve the experience for future contributors who can be spun around by having a mismatch between their expectations from the contribution guide and the demonstrated behavior of contributors up to the project lead Kevin. I want to be fully clear again that I'm not trying to argue or start a war, just neutrally explain my perspective, and express the desire to work with everyone to get everything sorted.
> I look forward to your feedback when you have a chance to review the PR.