Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Goehring <scott@poverty.bloomington.in.us>
To: John R Sheets <dusk@smsi-roman.com>
Cc: Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com>; gnome-gui-list@gnome.org
<gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 6:27 PM
Subject: Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...


>Another good idea would be to run proposals by a couple of actual
>programmers for feasibility review first.  (No, I am not volunteering;
>I don't have the time.)

>
>The problem Dan has is he can't satisfactorily answer the question,
>"Why should I spend time to listen to you?"

You should listen to me because I listen to users and am not a code bigot.

> I spent almost an hour
>last night explaining why his "minbar" idea is effectively
>unimplementable (as proposed) in X.  His response was "Well, maybe we
>can get people to patch X so it works".

Yes, and I accepted many of your points, and tried to see if there was a
valid technical way around them.  You ended up with "a minbar server that
would poll the contents of an occluded window without changing the state of
the server would be too much work."

At one point, I did say "this sounds like a flaw in X", and suggested
perhaps a patch to the protocol was a valid idea.  What, we're not allowed
to suggest patches?

Anyway, there *is* a problem with the minbar proposal, and it's a serious
one:  Scott has a HUGE point; unlike the cluehunting proposal, I never say
*WHY* each feature is good.  I just sorta put them out there.  This is a
mistake, it's one I've argued against in the past, and it's one I will
rectify.

>Why should I listen to
>someone who wants to redesign an industry standard in order to support
>some idea that I don't even think is all that good?


Exactly why I now have to write a "why" behind each feature of the minbar.

By the way Scott, hate to break this to you but the first project of mine
that'll prolly be Proof-Of-Concept'd will be the minbar.  So, for somebody
who says I don't care about coders...I have a coder telling me he can do it,
he wants to do it, and he's gonna do it.

Next time you think something's impossible, say it publically instead of
smugly laughing to yourself and keeping the knowledge from me.  The minbar
was announced weeks ago, hell you were at the meeting!