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: Dan "Effugas" Kaminsky <effugas@best.com>
Cc: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 7:06 PM
Subject: Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...


>"Dan" == Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky <Dan> writes:
>
>>>  The problem Dan has is he can't satisfactorily answer the
>>> question, "Why should I spend time to listen to you?"
>
>Dan> You should listen to me because I listen to users and am not a
>Dan> code bigot.
>
>This response is both unsatisfactory and insulting.  First, it
>suggests that I don't listen to users.  (I do.)  Second, it implies
>that I am a code bigot, a loaded term deliberately selected to
>disparage.  Responses like that don't do your "respect capital" any
>good at all.


You are correct.  I apologize.  I should have said "You should listen to me
because my cluehunting proposal shows I have a reasonably good grasp of what
would make a user interface better.  You are correct, though:  I need to
modify the minbar proposal so as to explain the reasons why I believe the
functions chosen would be useful.

>Dan> Yes, and I accepted many of your points, and tried to see if
>Dan> there was a valid technical way around them.  You ended up with
>Dan> "a minbar server that would poll the contents of an occluded
>Dan> window without changing the state of the server would be too much
>Dan> work."
>
>No, I do not believe that this is what I said.  I believe that I said
>that it would either impose too much of a memory demand on the X
>server, or require hacks which are highly unlikely to be either
>portable or efficient.  It would also be more work than _I_ feel it is
>worth, so you won't get me to write it.


Wasn't asking you to write it.  Point was, you said that I ignored you, and
I didn't.  You brought up a valid technical flaw in my argumentation, so I
attempted to find out if there were solutions to the problem.

You know, like you were just telling me to do in another post?  Consult with
a programmer, find out if something is feasable before running off and
telling everybody that I have a solution?  I was told you were a programmer,
and once I got you to "pull me back down to earth", I could see that you
actually had more knowledge on the subject than I did and I tossed a few
solutions by you.  We got to a point where a working solution was found,
though it would be difficult to implement according to you.

>Dan> At one point, I did say "this sounds like a flaw in X", and
>Dan> suggested perhaps a patch to the protocol was a valid idea.
>Dan> What, we're not allowed to suggest patches?
>
>Changing X is not a viable option.  X is an industry standard.  If you
>want to propose a change to X, you had better have a Damn Good Reason
>for it.  Your minbar proposal, in my opinion, is not sufficiently good
>reason.


That's why I gave up this option, and leaned towards some kind of minbar
server that would invisibly poll the contents of an occluded window.

>Dan> By the way Scott, hate to break this to you but the first project
>Dan> of mine that'll prolly be Proof-Of-Concept'd will be the minbar.
>Dan> So, for somebody who says I don't care about coders...I have a
>Dan> coder telling me he can do it, he wants to do it, and he's gonna
>Dan> do it.
>
>That's perfectly fine with me.  I don't mind if someone wants to do
>something I think is not worth doing.  Hell, millions of people use
>Windows every day.  Do you see me losing sleep over this?


What was that about using Outlook, Scott?

>Dan> Next time you think something's impossible, say it publically
>Dan> instead of smugly laughing to yourself and keeping the knowledge
>Dan> from me.  The minbar was announced weeks ago, hell you were at
>Dan> the meeting!
>
>And, as I've explained to you already, you don't have enough "respect
>capital" for me to bother reading your proposals.  I was at that
>meeting to keep an eye on Bowie; I was concerned with the injury to
>GNOME's overall reputation that he was causing, as I am now with the
>injury you are causing.  At the time of that meeting, your proposals
>did not concern me.


So let me get this straight.

You don't want GNOME getting a bad reputation.

So, and tell me if I'm clear on this...you wait until *after* a GNOME
proposal is posted publically to rail on its author for being an idiot and
having factual errors, when you had *PRIOR ACCESS* to the document for
checking?

As I have done before, all proposals will be given *at least* 24 hours of
GNOME-GUI access before I publically release them.  Perhaps my proposals
concern you enough now?