Re: Err..To Desktop Or Not To Desktop?

[Bowie Poag <bjp primenet com>]

> > Id envision the final "nod of approval" to happen far beyond the scope of
> > the people who correspond/read the mailing list. After all, its kinda hard
> > to be impartial to something you yourself have worked on. :) 
> 
> exactly what I said. we here (if I may take it to speak for the majority) DO
> NOT want to place a nod on something. we want to create it.

Tom,

I'm giving you the opportunity to do both create AND judge the document.
Perhaps im missing something there.. Why do you feel it would be a bad
idea to vote on your own collective creation, as members of the style
guide?

> > Yeah. The Style Guide will be written based largely on the desires of
> > people who have expressed valid, informed points of view, with a very
> > careful balance between the needs of the user and the needs of the coder.
> > Its just that the more people have swimming in the pond, the muddier the
> > water gets, so to speak. 
> 
> there is a problem in this. I have a couple of resources at hand, with
> friends who work in such businesses as screen design, psychology and such,
> plus an extensive library of my own.

Gimmie.:) I have a good sized stack of em, too. :)

> but I can't go to my friends and say "tell me something about gui's" nor can
> I dig through books with that intention. I need something more detailed
> before I can comment on it. I bet there are about a dozen things in your
> style guide that I would comment on this way, but as I don't know them, I
> can't address 'em.

Yet. Once a fully formed style guide is available to be picked apart, you
can draw giant X`s thru entire sections, if you feel like it. The authors
will then take your concerns into consideration, go back to the drawing
board, and make the necesary changes you've described. You have a hand in
its creation, and you have a hand in its subsequent tweaking. Whats wrong
with that?

> 
> > The history of the Declaration of Independence & The Bill Of Rights are
> > both good examples of what i'm talking about. Both were documents which
> > (in the end, at least) were penned by a very small group of people based
> > on the input of a large number of others.
> 
> as I said: maybe you are right and going the right way. but maybe you are
> not. that's why I'll go and start a second style guide. one of them will go
> to /dev/null in the end and at that point we'll know for sure who was right
> about how this should be done. ok with you?

Well, considering every document which has passed thru our own Congress in
the past 200 years has been created, scrutinized, and put into law in the
same exact fashion as what I've proposed we do with the style guide, I
very certain that my way is the best, right now.

A document is formed by a small comittee. The comittee takes the document
to the floor of the House Of Representatives (You can think of the Mailing
List & The General Public as our "House") ...A debate regarding the
contents of the document begins. People like some parts of it, and dont
like others -- So the comittee goes back into session, and chisels it out
some more. Eventually, after doing this 5 or 6 times, they have a document
that the House Of Representatives can agree on, and its OK'ed. The
document then goes to the Senate (which you can think of as the people
heading up the GNOME project, us on the mailing list, and the general
public all wrapped up into one) look at it, and decide what needs to be
changed or added.. So after much modification, we ALL have a document
which is agreed upon, and a vote is taken. A nod of approval, or a nod of
disapproval -- The bill is trashed, or put into law at this point.

Make sense now? The process is as open, and as democratic as possible,
without dissolving into a total mess.


Bowie