Re: [Usability] Re: Settings windows and dialogs

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 05:52:35PM -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 04:35:00PM -0600, Gregory Merchan wrote:
> > 
> > Unfreeze the API or do the work without a lib. Having a bad UI until 2004
> 
> > by duplicated programmer effort. The HIG can specify the appearance and
> > behavior in whatever amount of detail is necessary and failure to comply
> > should be regarded as a bug.
> 
> IMHO that is not feasible at this date.  If we want any hope of
> releasing GNOME2 we need to draw a line in the sand and respect it.

And in part of my email that was snipped I said do whatever for 2.0 and
get it fixed for 2.0.x if that's what the schedule demands.


> It is painful to do it, but absolutely necessary.  There is no way
> that there is time to work up and kick around a new api.  Propose an
> api, and implement it in one of the development libs (eg gal) or in
> a leaf project.  Developers can evaluate it during 2.1.

I already did and made the code available.

http://www.phys.lsu.edu/students/merchan/GNOME/CGSettings-Book-and-Page.tar.gz

This is made so that switching to this code requires very little work.

I plan on a version to make GConf integration simpler for 3.0. The coding
style is already GNOME style (was Gtk+ style, but I changed it some days
before first making it available) and modulo a prefix change could be merged
into libgnomeui. There's not much to such a thing and it's already a
simplification of the work needed for at least multi-page settings. I also
intend to wrap it up as a bonobo control and container for the day that
available settings might be dynamically determined, such as by a power user
setting or something that extends functionality in some way.


> Applications do not get ported overnight, and they do not get ported
> because we declare 'non-conformance to the HIG is a bug'.

If not conforming is not a bug then there is no point to having a HIG at all.
If there is no HIG then the people awaiting one so that they can code to
platform UI specification will take their programmers elsewhere.


Greg Merchan