Re: GNOME now

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi Dave;

On 28 November 2012 13:57, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
>>> And if GNOME continues to bury all the configuration in secret corners
>>> without a UI, and even the basic stuff only by an add on (tweak tool)
>>> you'll continue to fail to empower users to modify their computing
>>> environment.
>>
>>
>> yes, because we all know that Freedom means Tweaking configuration
>> options, or *having* to modify your environment in order for it to
>> work.
>
>
> Is that what Alan said? Sensible defaults and UIless options are two
> different things. I'd argue that an UIless option is just as much of a fudge
> as an option in the UI - if there's no UI for it, why is it an option? Just
> use the default & remove the code paths handling the option.

you probably missed the fact that there is a UI for the options. it's
an optional UI exactly because the default is sensible and should be
enough — unless you're planning to tinker with it, in which case the
UI is available to you. there are actually *three* UIs:

  - the gsettings command line client;
  - the dconf-editor UI client;
  - the "tweak" UI client;

with the first one being the one shipped by default.

as opposed to the days of GNOME 2.x, the tweak UI tool is actually
maintained, hosted on git.gnome.org, released along with the rest of
GNOME, and designed by the GNOME design team. but, obviously, having
three maintained UIs for settings, an extension mechanism that blows
out of the water anything that was ever available in GNOME 2.x, is a
clear regression for whosoever decides to tinker with GNOME. oh, no,
wait: it's not, and I'd appreciated if people at least had the
intellectual honesty and the good grace to acknowledge this bit of
history, instead of throwing accusations and wildly inappropriate
conspiracy theories around.

by the way, I always assumed that my ability to tinker with GNOME was
a right guaranteed and enforced by the license we use, not by having
UI to toggle options; I probably missed the memo.

> To put it another way: You don't have to weld to hood shut to sell someone a
> functional car.

this metaphor is *so* wrong, and on so many levels, it's not even
funny, and I would have expected far more from you Dave.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

--
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/