Re: Proposal for First Draft of GNOME Style Guide 1.1

["Dan Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederick I Gleef <gleef@capital.net>
To: Dan Kaminsky <effugas@best.com>
Cc: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Monday, August 03, 1998 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: Proposal for First Draft of GNOME Style Guide 1.1


>I'll buy this one far better if Bowie would admit the mistake, and
>promises to discuss scheduling before the next conference.  Note: before
>flaming, the only mistake I am talking about here is the scheduling
>mistake.


It wasn't intentional.  Bowie's simply not that malicious  Anyway,
supposedly I have as much "power" as Bowie does right now, so lemme say this
about as publically as it gets...the next meeting *will* occur at a much
more sane time for all parties involved.

>For future reference, Primenet seems to be a site that has problems.  Many
>of the things I tried to look at under Bowie's wab pages seemed to stop
>partway through the download for no particluar reason.  Specifically, the
>photos on the front page didn't resolve completely, the updated skeleton
>would not finish downloading, the quesstion page stopped at question 11
>out of 20.  Perhaps another site might be advisable.


Yeah, I'm harassing webmaster@gnome.org as we speak--this project should
have gnome web space.

>He is talking here about many things in the abstract.  When I said the
>sentence you quote, I was under the misimpression that more detailed
>things were to be hammered out on IRC.  Now that the conference is over,
>it is clear that he is being as abstract in the conference.


Yeah, Bowie prefers to work a bit slower, a bit more thought out than some
might prefer.  That's why he brought Bill and myself onboard.  We *WILL* get
this thing to liftoff.

I do envision that eventually the PSG(Parallel Style Guide) and the UISG
will merge once again, if only because I intend to shamelessly swipe large
portions of the PSG for use in the UISG.  Hope Tom and John don't mind...

>I am not.  This list is not closed.  To my knowledge, this list has never
>denied access to anybody.  To my knowledge, the only way to get denied
>access to this list is to be abusive or harrasing.


Some people pay for their email access.  ALL people pay with time.  We
shouldn't demand somebody wade through 600+ messages in the last two or
three weeks just to be able to contribute to our project.

>I never said that IRC meetings were bad.  I said that IRC was an
>inappropriate place to discuss the details of the style guide.  Now that I
>have attended one of these IRC meetings, it is clear to me that details
>are not what Bowie had in mind.


No.  He put together a damn good questionnaire, and a very good skeleton for
the document.  Like I said, Bowie is obsessed with getting it right *THE
FIRST TIME*.  This is a definite sign of somebody who has gotten it WRONG
before and NEVER EVER wants to do it again :-)

You do not need to worry about any kind of "glacial pace" continuing.  Bill
and I will see to that.

>How does GIMP stand in direct contradiction to what I am saying.  I point
>out problems with IRC, you give me an application?  I fail to understand
>the argument.
>
>If, you are referring to the IRC meetings that I am told were part of the
>GIMP development, all I know about them is what Bowie mentioned, which is
>that the developers found them cruical.  I know nothing about where they
>were held, how they were advertized, or or if they addressed the points I
>was making, or how similar or different they were from Bowie's meeting.
>
>Just because someone found something useful is not an argument against
>detailed points.  Did they find it useful in spite of the points?  Did
>they find the points did not apply?  Did they take extra measures to work
>around the points?


The GIMP developers are on record talking about the critical nature of being
all in one place at one time.

I think it really should be noted how much of the meeting consisted of
gnome-dev types interrogating us gnome-gui'ers as to what the HECK we were
gonna ask them to do.  Talk about openness--these are the schmucks that are
gonna have to code our baby, it's a DAMN good thing to have them in on the
process at a VERY early level.

>
>> I agree, the scheduling of this bit ass, but it bit because it was on a
>> Sunday, not because it was at 3AM your time(what about the
>> Japanese/Austrailians/etc?)
>
>It happened not to be 3AM my time.  It was, however, pre-dawn monday
>morning for many of the contributors here.  There were many comments to
>the effect that they would have prefferred a Sunday meeting, even a
>pre-dawn one.
>
>I think that your annoyance at it being on a Sunday pales in comparison to
>the disruption of work that their attendance would have required.  Yes, it
>is always 3AM somewhere, but scheduing a meeting on Monday was just bad.


Yes, agree totally, won't happen again as long as I'm a maintainer.