Re: new file selector dialog?

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Fri, 2002-03-08 at 14:13, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 2002-03-08 at 16:48, David Moles wrote:
> > 
> > And I don't think it *should* be a *standard* feature just because *you*
> > need it for *your* situation. I'm not seeing the need, so I don't think
> > it should be a standard; you *are* seeing the need, so you do. We need
> > to determine whose situation is more typical.
> 
> Or, simply, which idea the general GNOME community likes best.  I've
> found that, with Open Source, need isn't nearly as important as want,
> with the average set of developers.  ^,^

True enough. :)

> Actually, the three biggest misfeatures of GNOME are *constantly* talked
> about, by both GNOME users and non-GNOME users.  Those would be, since
> you are curious, the file selector, the difficulty of configuration, and
> low amount of integration.

There, now that's much better. :) Sorry -- I have my head down in
the details of the usability, gnome-devel, and nautilus mailing list
discussions and don't tend to see the big picture.

> The file selector is terrible.  The only thing nice about it is tab
> completion.  From an average idiot point of view, it's unusable.

I wouldn't call it completely unusable, though I will admit it makes me
cringe. Is there any agreement on just what's broken and just what needs
to be fixed, though?

> Configuration is a pain - the control center is not laid out at all in a
> useful way for newbies/idiots.  And, generally, you can't get to the
> control center from the places a user would expect (i.e., entering the
> MIME type/URL handler from within the Evolution display settings, where
> a user would want to control the display of MIME attachments on their
> messages).

I think the GNOME 2.0 control center is significantly improved,
particularly with the trend toward getting rid of as many capplets
as possible. Not to say it still doesn't need work.

I think not being able to get to controls from where you'd expect
is a problem with the applications. The hooks are there, or Nautilus
wouldn't be able to launch it for you -- even if the dialog box
that gets you there has silly text and the control itself is over-
complicated and confusing.

> And integration is poor... GNOME 2.0 should be better.  Integration
> means anything from the above mentioned configuration problems to the
> general lack of applications that work together.  I want to see how much
> the GNOME 2.0 apps help with that - the problem seems to be based
> largely on architecture, which is what GNOME 2 changes the most of.

Part of the problem is that the so-called GNOME Office isn't really a
project, it's a grab bag of applications. I assume KOffice is better
in that respect. (I've never been able to get it to run on my RedHat
system even after setting up a second user with KDE instead of GNOME
as their desktop.)

> GNOME developers in general seem to work like I do.. rewriting the
> underlying architecture of the apps/systems 10 billion times and never
> getting much work done on the part the user sees.  ^,^

Sometimed I get the feeling that all the apps people jumped on the
KDE/QT bandwagon right away, leaving only the architecture people to
work on GNOME/GTK. :) That said, I think at least Gnumeric, Evolution,
Galeon and (aside from performance) Nautilus are the equal of anything
out there.