Re: PROPOSAL: UISG Compliancy Level Standardization, Revision 3

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

Dan Effugas Kaminsky wrote:

> I must repeat my objection
> to Level 5, the experimental level, being held in the same category as
> Levels 1 through 4.  I think our highest number should be our best case
> scenario.  Level 5 is NOT necessarily a best case scenario as is--lets say
> some really strange under development feature pops out.  To retain GC5
> compliance, an application must put this feature in whether it deserves it
> or not.  That's not right--features that might not be that good would be
> shoved in!

I agree that experimental (i.e. not fully-implemented features) should not fall
into an official style level.  I proposed the following levels in my previous
post, "Identity within Compliancy Levels":

GC1: GNOME-Friendly (Gleef's term)
GC2: Core GNOME
GC3: Integrated GNOME
GC4: Advanced GNOME
GC5: Extended GNOME

Fairly intuitive.  I refer you to that post for a better description of what
each would mean.  I believe that this is a more natural progression than my
earlier proposal that placed the experimental styles in GC5.  With this latest
version, GC5 holds the more gee-whiz features, like theming and animations,
etc....stuff that is (potentially) fully-implemented, but far from necessary to
an average GNOME app.  GC5 should have nothing to do with whether a feature is
implemented or not.

To cover this experimental fringe, I propose that all apps with experimental
features be branded with an "x" at the end of the compliancy rating.  Thus, a
GC3 app that uses hot new 3-D Virtual Reality GNOME API's would be labeled as
"GC3x".  The overall compliance is still obvious, as is the fact that it may
contain unstable features.  And no more blurring of the compliance levels.  Best
of both worlds.

John