Re: Tomboy in Desktop

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, Iain * wrote:

> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:19:49 +0100
> From: Iain * <iaingnome gmail com>
> To: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Tomboy in Desktop
>
> On 7/27/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> > <quote who="Jeff Waugh">
> >
> > > Here's my point of view, completely independent from the fact that Tomboy
> > > is built with Gtk#/Mono. Here it is in point form, because I seem to be
> > > doing pretty well with it:
> >
> > I haven't really heard much of a critical response to these ideas, just more
> > "ber, Desktop, Desktop, Desktop, get it all in Desktop" stuff. Why does it
> > need to be in Desktop? Why do we have to jam everything in Desktop? Can we
> > ship it in Powertools (a suite that has been proposed a couple of times)...?
>
> Taking notes is hardly a power user thing. Most people like having a
> place that they can just scribble some notes down.

Gedit also covers that requirement in the most basic sense.

> b) Having both but deprecating sticky notes to remove it at a later
> date is kinda the cop out solution to satisfy the people screaming
> about application churn or saying that they'll miss their favourite
> note taking application. And I think its a non-argument really.

Please dont be so dismissive.  The reality is that most people are not
admins of their own machines, if it isn't installed by default it
doesn't exist.  Sure it is possible in theory to add things back in
manually if you really want them but in practice the barriers to making
that happen are very high.

> Removing sticky notes at some arbitary later date will once again have
> people saying that they'll miss their favourite note taking
> application, and complaining about application churn, and so it will
> never be removed.

Never say never.  It is not unreasonable to expect different versions of
Gnome 2 to offer pretty much the same applications.  Gnome 3 is an obvious
cut off point, a very definative limit where after which things are very
much expected to change significantly.

Tomboy has always been suggested in terms of adding a useful application.
Later the idea of removing sticky notes was brought up but there wasn't
a serious stage of trying to improve what is already there.

As you probably already know Havoc Pennington wrote a very interesting
article about Working on Free
Software http://ometer.com/hacking.html
which makes a strong point of "Don't start by launching your own project"
but Gnome is faced by a lot of overlapping projects.

Thanks to a combination of energetic developers with better more mature
set of tools and infrastructure to build on there are various newer
projects looking to displace the older ones.  There doesn't seem to be
much asked about fixing what is already there, questions like if gthumb
can be brought up to the level of f-spot for example.  The overlap of
Tomboy and Sticky notes you are using as a reason to remove Sticky notes
only highlights that interlinking and referencing is the compelling
innovative part of Tomboy and the rest is overlap.

> Leaving c, in my opinion, the only viable option. The people who
> upgrade to the new gnome won't suddenly find their sticky notes had
> been uninstalled in the process, so it will still function as normal,
> and there is nothing stopping people taking the old sticky notes and
> maintaining it outside of gnome, it it actually matters that much to
> them. The people who install gnome for the first time won't know that
> they missed the yellow sticky note app in the first place.

Realistically taking out of Gnome is a kiss of death.  Being willing or
more importantly able to maintain a project doesn't mean you like a
project any less.  This discussion is a user saying they will miss sticky
notes.  By the time the latest version of Gnome trickles down to the
distributions and then the end users it is all too late for users to ask
for it to be put back in.

How long has Sticky notes been included in Gnome, since Gnome 2.10 or
thereabouts?  This discussion has already highlighted that Panel Applets
are not particularly discoverable, whereas a prominent menu item has
means Tomboy is a lot more discoverable.

> Having the first time importer doodah and maybe renaming it to just
> Notes in the menu so people don't get confused because they don't know
> what tomboy is.

The standard naming convention already requires APPNAME + GENERIC NAME
inside the .desktop file and it depends on your settings what gets shown,
the Gnome default being to show the Generic name (Notes, Text Editor,
Spreadsheet, etc.)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan