Hello Jonathan, you have been hired by The Document Foundation in the role of developer focusing on the issues of languages written from right to left, or RTL (Right to Left).
Not only RTL topics – also CTL (Complex Text Layout), and CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean). I wanted to point this out, first for the interest of those communities, and second because I feel strongly about the scope The Document Foundation has chosen for this role.
In order to have great language support, I think you need to have two different kinds of people working together: those who can speak to the incredible depth of specific languages and the unique needs of the people who use them; and generalists who can, in the limit, think about all languages, and thus avoid oversights that will prove costly in the long term. I see this role as much closer to the latter than to the former.
Let’s start with a short biography: your origins, your studies, your professional experiences.
My origin is the Canadian wilderness. My parents introduced me to PC games when I was young, and I was instantly and insatiably curious about how they worked. I learned C++, and that eventually led to an undergraduate degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta.
Most of my professional experience has been working on commercial C++ software quality tools, both as an individual contributor and by providing technical leadership.
For the past few years, I’ve been doing a deep dive on modern game engine technologies as a passion project. Among many other topics, this included real-time text layout and hardware-accelerated text rasterization.
When and how did you approach open source software?
As a user, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t use open source software in one way or another. I’ve never felt comfortable trusting closed-source software for anything important, and that discomfort has only grown over time as business practices change.
As a developer, I’m a bit of a hypocrite – other than a few small projects, I haven’t contributed much. However, speaking both normatively and from experience, I firmly believe that the only way to deliver quality software is with the transparency and accountability of open source.
Why did you decide to respond to The Document Foundation’s job search?
I think it’s important. I want to help people use open source software to work and create in their own language.
There are other reasons, too: I’m a long-time user, interested in linguistics, and my background seemed like a good fit for the role. But the most important thing to me is that I can believe in the mission.
What is your experience as a developer, and why do you think you can contribute significantly to LibreOffice?
As an individual contributor, I’ve been using C++ for a long time and I’m comfortable with large code bases. I’d never looked at the LibreOffice source code before, but it’s similar to projects I’ve worked on in the past.
Finally, what is your feedback after the first few months in the LibreOffice project?
The main feedback I want to offer is praise for the new contributor outreach effort. Most open source projects seem to treat this as an afterthought, but a lot of work has been put into attracting, guiding, and retaining new LibreOffice contributors. It’s wonderful to see.
It’s also been great to see the passion from the community about improving language support.
