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Target Audience
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This document provides an overview of which target audience is
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currently appropriate, how it conveniently works to our advantage, and
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how we plan to increase our appeal in that area.
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Demographics
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Currently the only point of interest is development. The product is not
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ready for general use for many reasons (not least of which is having an
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outdated implementations of standards). Hence it would appeal only to
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niche demographics at best.
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The general user is currently better served by other compilers, as they
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provide mature and stable tools.
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For the near to mid future, mostly owing to our small number of
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developers and limited time with which to apply ourselves to the
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project, we cannot compete with the maturity of the other compilers
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(most notably the gcc) in either features or stability.
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However, we have an advantage in our small size, in both response to
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individual requests, and accessibility of our code base. TenDRA has
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a beautiful, clear structure, which is unusually understandable for
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a C compiler. This alone attracts people for whom "working" is not the
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only thing that matters. The project is founded on the patient,
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long-term investments in thought that these people bring.
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Right now, we need all the help we can get. As our target audience is
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not the general user, this leaves only niche groups. By the very nature
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of the implementation and design both being beautiful to behold, we
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are well-set to attract these people: this niche is developers.
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Having only developers interested in the project also works to our
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advantage: it relieves the pressure of maintaining a stable branch - we
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simply do not have the resources to do that.
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See also donations, for a discussion on putting money to use at
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attracting developers.
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Increasing Appeal
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So, our goal for appeal in the near future is to attract this specific
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type of developer. I believe this is best done by making our products
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applicable to their own projects.
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On the assumption that they are not re-implementing wheels, their
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projects will have unique requirements. We have particularly wonderful
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implementations of proven technologies in the form of sid, lexi, and
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TDF.
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I propose that these are certainly applicable outside of the TenDRA
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project - as indeed they were, originally - and that these should be
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pushed as independently useful items.
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Furthermore, components of TenDRA itself may be modularised. The
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advantages here are twofold:
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1. To not "scare off" prospective developers, who would be otherwise
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uncertain about committing patches to a relatively large project.
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Modularisation allows these developers to work on only the parts
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which interest them, and to not worry about having to maintain
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unrelated code simply because it is present.
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This also lowers the barrier to entry: there is less to learn
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before a person becomes useful.
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2. To attract developers by providing exactly the tools they need, and
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no more. This is a perfect way to avoid bloat. Briefly, all tools
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useful to TenDRA are not necessarily useful to the developer in
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question.
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The technical plans for the process of migrating to this modularised
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system are beyond the scope of this document: they are discussed in the
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components and restructure documents.
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