Re: Fw: Incessant Horse Flogging.

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 13:33, Bowie J. Poag wrote:
> Hi  Greg,
> 
> > During the last few months some boring small steps in the wrong direction
> > have been proposed. Do you think they were in the right direction?
> 
> Do I think Gnome is developing in the right direction? In an overall sense,
> yeah, i'd say things are going in the right direction, albeit slowly.
> Specifically,
> however, there are alot of things I would change.  In my opinion, this
> project is wholly concerned in imitating and/or building things which have
> already been built. It seems no one is willing to stop and look at it from
> 50,000 ft....no ones willing to try something new and unproven.  Its like
> the people involved in deciding what makes it onto the desktop are terrified
> of introducing an idea that isn't already seen in Windows or OS X.

One problem to realize is that in many areas, we aren't even as good as
they are yet.  I don't want the developers to waste time implementation
Revolutionary New Idea X(tm) when things like a general key-binding
daemon still aren't present, or the file-selector is still butt-ugly,
etc.

> 
> > Then tell us what direction that is and show us why it is right.
> 
> If you're in a situation where all you're doing is mimicking what someone
> else has already done, you are resigning yourself to 2nd place. In order to
> take the lead, _you_ need to be the one who's building something new... Let
> them play catch-up to _you_. Not the other way around. It just seems like an
> awfully big waste of time to build something so wonderful, and shackle it to
> the "perpetually not quite as good as other platforms" monicker.

See previous statement.

> 
> > Tell us how can you can have a right direction when there isn't even
> > a destination. World domination doesn't cut it.
> 
> I agree. World domination isn't the destination. The destination is to give
> something to people thats better than whats already out there. Nothing less,
> and nothing more. I'm honestly surprised you think theres no ultimate goal
> to what people are doing here. Anything less than what i've just said
> summarizes Gnome as nothing more than years of pointless tail-chasing and
> directionless labor.

Far from it.  GNOME development seems to take an approach akin to: "What
is wrong, and how do we fix it?", whereas you seem more interested in,
"What would be cool, and how do we add it?"

With the later, you end up with things like the Hurd - great ideas, lots
of new functionality you don't see anywhere else, but yet still
completely useless to 99% of people, because many of the basic mundane
stuff that Every Other OS has, it doesn't.  When GNOME matures to the
point where there's no large holes missing in functionality, them maybe
developers can sit back and think, "OK, here's a good desktop, what can
we do to blow away the competition?"

It's a lie to say GNOME has no innovation at all, the developers have
certainly come up with some interesting technologies, a few with an
approach not seen or matched elsewhere (GStreamer comes to mind).

Or things like the Nautilus 'OO UI' - strikingly new, I suppose, but
hopefully an idea that never comes to fruition... ugh. *shudder* (and
yes, that's just personal opinion; I'm sure others see some kind of sick
value in that kind of UI ~,^ )

And truly, copying another UI often has its advantages in two ways:
first, sometimes the UI being copied is just damn good.  For example,
the button ordering; at first it irritated me, having always had buttons
the old way.  Now I love it; it honestly does feel easier and more
intuitive (except for the few apps that didn't prioritize the buttons
properly, so it ends up not matching the old style or having a good
layout - hopefully they'll be fixed up soon...)

Second, sometimes an interface that has existed for 10+ years just
*needs* to be copied.  Computer geeks can generally adjust fairly well
to a new interface, especially one they help develop, but what about the
average users... the only ones who will find it more intuitive will be
the ones with no prior experience.  Take Sally from Accounting who's
used Windows for 7 years, and put her on a desktop where everything
works different, terminology is different, buttons are different,
file-system navigation is different... at least, she'll need *at least*
a week of expensive training; if she's seeing it outside of the company,
she'd probably dismiss it right off and never look back at the 'Weird
Computer Layout'.

> >
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Greg Merchan
> > _______________________________________________
> > desktop-devel-list mailing list
> > desktop-devel-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
> 
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.