Re: Random thought...

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com> wrote:
> >a) you are VERY quick to convert ideas to fact. "gnome SHOULD have..." is a
> >much better way to state your opinion.
> 
> No.  Should implies I like this state of affairs.  Will implies there's
> nothing that anybody can do to stop this:

however, this is not the case. the case is that you ASSUME there is nothing
that anybody...
I assume the contrary. I believe that one of the reasons people like Linux
is the fact that they have choices.




> If the ideas are good, but don't belong in GNOME, where do they belong?

dan! listen, please.
we are writing the gnome style guide here, right? should be put everything
into it that's a cool idea and has somehow got to do with user interface in
the broadest possible sense? no, neither do I think so.

nothing stops you from writing a seperate document, say "guidelines on
application behaviour". in fact, I DO absolutely agree that no user-level
program should EVER require a reboot. none, nada, zero, keins.
it's just that these things don't belong into the thing we're working on
here. they just don't. we can't write a 4000 page everything-manual, we have
to stick to the basics or most app writers will simply ignore the whole
thing.


> GNOME isn't tied to Kernels(Litestep), nor is it tied to X(Berlin).  It can
> make "demands", if you will, of anything that pisses of the user.  I'm
> sorry.  If a computer pisses me off, I don't want to hear "well that's not
> my job".

but it is not. it's not the job of the style guide to write these things
down. if we agree that feature A in wm B is a bad thing, we should write an
e-mail to the author(s) of that wm.


> We're supposed to describe how to build an interface that *DOES
> NOT PISS PEOPLE OFF*.  What part of MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY is a bad thing?

the "let's write an all-inclusive document about it" part.

if Linux would have to reboot for, say, color-depth changes in X, I wouldn't
write a document about it, I would complain to the xfree86 team.

see it? it's not that it's a bad thing, or that I didn't care. it's just
that it doesn't belong into a style guide for gnome. and it seems that apart
from you, everyone shares that view. so please let us move on with the more
constructive work.



-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
		-- Henry Spencer