Project JEDI - the beginnings ... the goals
by Alan C. Moore
It began on a Friday afternoon. Someone posted a complaint to the COBB Delphi Developers' Mailing List (DDJ-Thread). In essence it asked, "Why do we have to wait so long for Borland to make new APIs available in Delphi? Is there anything we can do?"
The question prompted an immediate and furious inpouring of sympathy, opinion and suggestions from Delphi developers all over the world. Someone suggested that we could translate the C headers ourselves and share the results with fellow Delphi programmers. For several hours, the DDJ-Thread was swamped with offers to contribute to such an effort - programmers offering to translate, people offering web resources, experts offering to advise.
Project JEDI (the "Joint Endeavour of Delphi Innovators") was born.
Project JEDI takes shape
Messages continued to pour in over that first weekend, as Project JEDI began to take
shape. By early the next week the project had its own list server. Through the list
server, the participants arrived at a tentative consensus about how forces might be
organized. There would be an Admin group, with each member taking responsibility for
coordinating the work of a specific group: a conversion team, a team of testers, a team to
write help files, a team to develop a Web-site, and so on.
As the second weekend approached, a vote was held to elect the Admin group. During an IRC discussion hosted by one of the team members, the results were announced and programmers from around the world took up their various responsibilities to make Project JEDI move forward.
In the ensuing weeks, additional lists have been established for the various working groups and communications have become more task-oriented and focussed. Now the Web site is a reality and the real work of Project JEDI has begun.
What will be produced?
Project JEDI has set itself the task of converting published C header files into new
Delphi units, classes and components that make new technologies freely available for use
in the native Delphi environment.
Initially, the products will be Delphi import units for a selection of APIs, complete with help files in a standard format and tested example Delphi code using these classes and components.
The Goals of Project JEDI
What can YOU do?
Participants realized early on that this spontaneous force that was binding together
volunteers from the worldwide Delphi community could be powerful, both in educating newer
developers and in providing a continuing source of self-help support and innovation to the
larger programming community.
Would you like to help make this happen? Won't you join us in this Joint Endeavor of Delphi Innovators and become a true Delphi innovator?