Re: Appearance properties

[Guillaume Desmottes <cass skynet be>]

Le mardi 10 novembre 2009 à 10:18 +0100, Xavier Claessens a écrit :
> So if you agree/disagree with those changes, please tell your opinion! I
> would like to know if I'm the only one to be worried.

I do share your concerns.

I think the biggest problem in this story is not the change itself but
the way it has been managed.

The change of default configuration has *not* been communicated
properly. It was not secret, of course, but such important change
affecting the whole desktop and each GNOME/GTK+ applications deserves a
better communication. It should be announced on ddl at the beginning of
the cycle, explaining the rational of the change, telling to maintainers
about the new policy regarding icons and how they should make sure that
their application still work fine. A plan should has been defined to
ensure that all the applications (not only the GNOME ones but also the
popular Gtk+ apps used on most GNOME desktop) wouldn't suffer from the
change.

Instead of that, most of the people discovered this change after it has
been merged (or when they upgraded their GNOME) and, afaik, there are
still no clear guidelines for maintainers explaining how they should
deal with icons (maybe such doc exists but if it does it hasn't been
communicated enough).

If I was paranoid I'd be tempted to think that this miss-communication
could have been somewhat intentional. If you want to push a
controversial change, it's easier to not talk too much about it before
so once people complain it's too late and they just have to suck it up.
I'm not accusing anyone and really hope that this wasn't the case (as
our code of conduct says we should assume that people mean well), but
you have to understand why some people are upset about the way this
whole thing has been managed.


Finally, I think it's a bit sad that we spend more time discussing if
it's ok to use $LANGUAGE to write GNOME apps and almost ignore such big
change affecting the experience of any GNOME user in any application...


Regards,


	G.


-- 
Guillaume Desmottes <cass skynet be>
Jabber <cassidy jabber belnet be>
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