{"id":981,"date":"2016-10-05T14:40:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T14:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/?p=981"},"modified":"2016-10-05T14:40:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T14:40:59","slug":"we-want-you-to-help-the-numbas-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/blog\/2016\/10\/we-want-you-to-help-the-numbas-project\/","title":{"rendered":"We want YOU to help the Numbas project!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The vast majority of development work on the Numbas system has been carried out by the e-learning unit of Newcastle University&#8217;s School of Mathematics and Statistics. In particular, almost all the code was written\u00a0by me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve\u00a0set aside time to write\u00a0up information on how <strong>you<\/strong> can get involved with the Numbas project. I&#8217;ve greatly expanded our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/contributing-to-numbas\/\">&#8220;Contributing to Numbas&#8221;<\/a> page, listing the different ways you can help. I&#8217;ll reproduce the top part of that page here:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We encourage any kind of contribution to the Numbas project, whether it\u2019s a\u00a0bug fix, a new feature or extension, documentation, or just a suggestion of a feature you\u2019d like to have.<\/p>\n<p>We are always interested in feedback from users, especially those with interesting ideas on how to develop and improve\u00a0the system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s how you can contribute to the Numbas project<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Report bugs, or suggest features you\u2019d like to see, on our issue trackers.<\/li>\n<li>Blog about how you use Numbas.<\/li>\n<li>Write some documentation.<\/li>\n<li>Add a feature or fix a bug by contributing code.<\/li>\n<li>Translate Numbas into your language.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->We really would appreciate\u00a0help in\u00a0any of those forms.\u00a0Bug reports and feature suggestions are invaluable feedback to guide our development. If you&#8217;re using Numbas successfully, please spread the word! While the Numbas documentation covers the individual features comprehensively, it could do with more information on the practicalities of\u00a0running a Numbas test, and the tricks of the trade that you pick up while writing questions.<\/p>\n<p>The last two items affect the Numbas code base directly, and I&#8217;ve done quite a bit of work to make it as easy as possible to get involved.<\/p>\n<p>Translation first: previously, enthusiastic Numbas users have translated the interface into their own language by copying my English strings file and replacing each message, line-by-line. I&#8217;ve now created <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poeditor.com\/join\/project\/4yrwn1Nc2l\">a Numbas project on the translation management system POEditor<\/a>, which provides a much nicer interface to work on translations. You can get started with just your email address, and it&#8217;s easy to start translating into a new language.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.poeditor.com\/join\/project\/4yrwn1Nc2l\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-989 size-main-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor-600x195.png\" alt=\"numbas-poeditor\" width=\"600\" height=\"195\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor-600x195.png 600w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor-300x97.png 300w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor-768x249.png 768w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor-1024x332.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-poeditor.png 1098w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally, I said at the start of this post that I want more people involved in the Numbas source code. It&#8217;s a fairly large\u00a0system, and working out how something\u00a0is implemented often\u00a0requires understanding multiple\u00a0inter-related parts of the code. To provide an easier way into development, I&#8217;ve picked out a few items from our GitHub issue trackers that are fairly straightforward to implement. Those issues have the label <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/numbas\/Numbas\/labels\/up-for-grabs\">&#8216;up-for-grabs&#8217;<\/a>: the idea is that you should be able to come in without any knowledge of how the system works and make the required change. Underneath each issue, I&#8217;ve written short sketches of\u00a0how they could be implemented, to save you scouring the codebase in search of the right place to start.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/numbas\/Numbas\/labels\/up-for-grabs\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-987 size-main-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-up-for-grabs-600x163.png\" alt=\"numbas-up-for-grabs\" width=\"600\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-up-for-grabs-600x163.png 600w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-up-for-grabs-300x82.png 300w, https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/numbas-up-for-grabs.png 683w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I chose the label &#8216;up-for-grabs&#8217; because I&#8217;ve added Numbas to <a href=\"http:\/\/up-for-grabs.net\/#\/\">up-for-grabs.net<\/a>,\u00a0a list of projects which have curated tasks specifically for new contributors. While I was there, I found a few other projects I&#8217;d like to contribute to &#8211; hopefully, the reverse will also happen!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d better reassure you that I&#8217;m not doing all this because I&#8217;m planning on leaving &#8211; I&#8217;m still working on Numbas full-time, and that&#8217;s not going to change any time soon. I just thought that, with Numbas being used by so many people now,\u00a0it could better reflect the\u00a0needs and wishes of its users if it wasn&#8217;t just me adding\u00a0features in when I need them.<\/p>\n<p>So, I hope this post has inspired you to contribute to the Numbas project in some way. If it has, head over to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/contributing-to-numbas\/\">Contributing to Numbas<\/a> page to find out how you can get started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The vast majority of development work on the Numbas system has been carried out by the e-learning unit of Newcastle University&#8217;s School of Mathematics and Statistics. In particular, almost all the code was written\u00a0by me. I&#8217;ve\u00a0set aside time to write\u00a0up information on how you can get involved with the Numbas project. I&#8217;ve greatly expanded our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.numbas.org.uk\/theme-testing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}