change

[sun <as387 yfn ysu edu>]

i'm going to take tom's suggestion and have a few days off, myself. i
took my argument with dan to private email, but i composed a few
paragraphs which i feel should be taken into account by others working
on the gnome gui, so i'll post just that part here:

let me tell you what i see:

every company, every church, every government, every organization fights
this war. it's called the "fear of change." an argument arises, and
somehow, what it boils down to, is that some people will fight for one
side of an argument because "we've always done it that way." i see
myself in the dynamic role here, and i see you as the more conservative
rock upon which "stability" is the strongest argument for everything.
changing something as fundamental as "quit" is too sacred for you, too
fearsome to allow the "wrongness" of its current position to provoke
change.

well, let me see if i can ease your fears a bit.

first is the issue of coping with what we are presented with. i
introduce to you 9 different programs: gedit, vi, pico, cat, yes,
electriceyes, ghostview, xemacs, and moonlight creator.

gedit allows you to quit from the first menu on the left, the "file"
menu.
vi makes you type "escape-ZZ" to quit.
pico uses "ctrl-x" to get out.
cat requires an eof, or "ctrl-d" before it will end.
yes is about as basic as you can get for a program. it needs a ctrl-c to
stop.
electriceyes takes a right-click to pop up a menu, of which "quit" is
the last choice.
ghostview has a "quit" button in the main window, right at the top.
xemacs sticks "exit emacs" in the _second_ menu to the left.
moonlight creator has a "file" menu, but chooses to stick "quit" on a
button at the bottom of the screen instead.

clearly, we can see that _any_ consistency at all is a step up from what
we are currently given in linux. the fact that we agree on consistency
will benefit gnome, even if we choose to make "quit" a command on the
bottom of the user's left shoe which can only be activated with
thumbprint authentication when the moon is 2 days past full. if it works
the same way every time, we have not lost.

as for those users we hope to evangelize, we're safe there too: new
computer users will understand the structure immediately and grow to
love it. people coming to us from other gui's will expect a bit of
change, and probably grow to like the more logical structure anyway.

world domination? even if you kept quit in file, it still wouldn't be
happening yet. those who want a windows-like gui have already chosen
windows. those who want a windows-like gui _on a stable os_ have already
chosen kde. those who really want to be productive and don't care about
the geek issues have already chosen a mac. we won't start evangelizing
these guys until the new users and the happy clueless who will follow us
blindly anyway realize what a hot toy they're playing with and start
spreading the word. once it's out what a cool desktop we have, they'll
come to _us_ looking for the right answer, and will already be convinced
to overlook a little relearning. it's going to take time, no matter
where we put gnome.

so i think you can relax. we're not going to crash and burn on this one.
feel free to let go a bit and ignore what "the other guys" are doing,
and what you're used to. innovation is the order of the day for our
clean-slate gui.
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin