Re: The noninclusion of Gaim

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 12:57, Sean Egan wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 18:48, Mark Finlay wrote:

> > Even if gaim maintainers could be convinced to move to Gnome cvs etc...
> 
> You'd be very hard pressed to convince us to move to GNOME CVS.  We've
> been with Sourceforge for years, and they've been very good to us.  We
> don't want to abandon them.

Then you strike out already.  It's been gone over before, translators
and such need you on GNOME CVS.

> 
> > they are not on boards the Gnome philosophy as far as I can tell. Gaim
> > would really need a massive UI and usability overhaul to "fit in" with
> > the Gnome desktop IMHO
> 
> I use Gaim and GNOME all the time and think they "fit in" together very
> well.  Gaim follows the GNOME HIG very well, follows appropriate
> freedesktop.org specifications.  I'd be interested in hearing what needs
> to be "overhauled."

For one, this has been gone over many times.  You can probably find a
lot of discussion on it in the archives for this list and
usability gnome org (where you should probably ask for suggestions,
those guys rock!)

1) Separate browser settings are extraneous
2) Same for proxy settings
3) 20 ways to configure IM window grouping and tabs is insane
4) Icon smileys *might* need to be icon themes, not sure tho
5) Tons of just plain insane settings - button icon/text, window pixel
sizes, etc.  Way too much crap that 99% of people *never* use, and
making them wade thru that crap sucks.  I still have trouble finding
useful settings in GAIM, even tho I've been using it for years. 
Completely insane.  The tree-view of settings is also bad, since it just
confuses things even more - is a setting in a general category or
sub-category, etc.  Strip out the uselss/extraneous settings and
simplify the browser to a list/icon list (or even tabs, if you can get
it down to few enough categories).
6) Menues on the buddy list need a bit of work.  There are pointless
options in the Buddies menu, like "Show empty groups" - these should be
moved to preferences, *if* you even need them.
7) The tools menu is just a complete mess.  I don't even know where to
begin with that - it just needs to be torn out and done over, I think. 
It's just far too technically oriented, for things that shouldn't be
(away messages, etc.)
8) I see the HTML for markup right in the IM message, which is
completely horrible.  It should work more like other apps (such as
Abiword) do with regards to markup; then just convert to HTML when you
send it across the wire.
9) Many of the plugins have whacked configuration/behaviour -
notification area icon is "violating" the spirit of the notification
area (I always see the GAIM icon, even tho it's not notifying me of
anything - just taking up space), the message notification plugin has
tons of various ways to notify me, just one (that works best with GNOME)
should be picked and be done with it.  Likewise, most common
functionality should be default, and not even have an option to disable
(why would they want to?  in extreme cases, they could hand-edit the
config file).

You can tell configuration is the main theme of the problem, tho there
are a few layout/complexity issues.  Again, the usability gnome org folk
could probably get much more indepth, and probably offer more concrete
and useful fix suggestions than a UI design neophyte like me can.  ;-)

GAIM does, however, do an fairly excellent job of following the layout
guidelines of the HIG so far as a non-GNOME app goes, which is quite
commendable.  ^,^

> 
> > I think that gaim should be the galeon of IM and for Gnome we need
> > something that fits in better with the goals of Gnome.
> 
> Good luck, then.

Or, more likely, GAIM would be the mozilla of browsing, and GNOME would
have an integrated, clean UI making use of the libgaim backend.  ;-)

> 
> -s.
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.