Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico gnome org>]

On Mon, 2012-07-02 at 16:03 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> Federico Mena Quintero <federico gnome org> wrote:
> ...
> > The anti-pattern for both removals is like, "there's some peeling paint
> > in this house - let's bulldoze the neighborhood".
> ...
> 
> How do you know that was the reason for the decision, if the
> background hasn't been explained? The anti-pattern for that statement
> is like, "assuming motivations out of ignorance".

Okay, that was a bad *analogy*.  I didn't assume motivation.  But
without an explanation of the motives, I can only infer - and this
smells to me like "I don't like how this feels; I have the power to
convince someone to remove the code, so I'll do that".  Maybe my
supposition is wrong, but you are not giving me much to work
from.  

I know Jon means well, but I'm inferring from the two cases I've seen
(bgo#676842, bgo#676897), where the only thing Jon said on a bug was, in
effect, "this doesn't work to my liking", and then proceeded to remove a
bunch of code for very concrete features.

> compact view is problematic, and I don't see any why we shouldn't
> remove UI if it isn't of sufficiently high quality. 

This is a very dangerous line to tread.  A *LOT* of our interface is not
as high-quality as someone with high standards would desire.  But we
can't remove big features just because they aren't up to someone's
standards.  We should improve them instead until they are palatable, or
we should make them superfluous when there is a better way of doing what
they do and with a good transition path.

Adam's concrete requirements are something like:

1. Need to browse lots of files.
2. Care more about the names than the icons.
3. Don't care about file metadata very much (superfluous detail).

And in the thread he started in nautilus-list, he provided *evidence*
that the other remaining views don't meet those requirements and thus
are harder for him to use.  At least he provided a thorough explanation.

I'm all for code cleanups, UI cleanups, and anything that can improve
our state of affairs.  Forgive me for using a strong word, but
destroying working functionality without explaining exactly what made it
bad, and without trying to fix it first, is just vandalism.

  Federico