Clearing up some things (plus flame retardant # 2)

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico nuclecu unam mx>]

Hello,

OK, some people seem have a tacit agreement on how to do things, and
some people disagree.  Let me try to clear up some things:

Bowie said (quote #1):

> The concept of "Compliance Levels" was first announced here, as part of
> the upcoming *official* style guide framework, about two weeks ago. I
> appreciate your input, but please hold off on producing them to the
> mailing list until the formal groundwork has been unveiled at the UISG
> Conference on Sunday. We all need to have consensus on the framework
> before we move onto the details.

And, oddly enough, he also said (quote #2:

> T h e  S t y l e  G u i d e  w i l l ,  a n d   m u s t   b e  
> t o t a l l y   o p e n   t o   p u b l i c  s c r u t i n y,  a t 
> e v e r y   s t e p   o f   i t s    d e v e l o p m e n t.
> 
> P l e a s e   g e t   t h e   i d e a   o u t   o f   y o u r
> h e a d   t h a t   I   w a n t   t h e   d e v e l o p m e n t
> o f   t h i s   d o c u m e n t   t o   b e   a   s o l i t a r y 
> a n d   i s o l a t e d   e f f o r t.

So people have a reason to be confused.  The following is the way
things should work, and I would appreciate everyone's cooperation:

- The only official style guide we have right now is the little
  document on the Gnome web site.  We cannot talk about the new
  official style guide, as it is non-existant.  This debunks the first
  sentence of quote #1.

- It seems to me like quote #1 is the wrong way to proceed, and people
  seem to agree.  What I would like right now is for someone, anyone,
  to collect the different UI suggestions that have appeared on this
  list and try to put them together in a reasonably organized
  document.  By "reasonably organized", I mean with a structure
  similar to that of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.  It
  does not matter if some of these UI suggestions contradict each
  other; that is everyone's job to discuss and formalize.

The style guide maintainer, if anything, should resove controversies
when there are equally acceptable points of view on some UI-related
issue.  If the style guide maintainer does not have a particular
preference for either point of view, then it is basically "flip a
coin" or "make it configurable", I think.

When concensus is reached on some UI issue and it is formalized on the
style guide, it may be the case that such issue is apt for
implementation on the libgnomeui library.  If so, then someone from
this list should implement it, if he is able to, or inform the
development lists about this new feature that has to be implemented.

As an example of this, let's say everyone agrees that having a little
"Gnome foot" menu is appropriate (I like this idea; some other people
may not like it, and that is fine, as this is just an example).  The
proper thing to do would be take the gnome-app-helper code and
implement some sort of GNOMEUIINFO_GNOME_MENU macro and the
corresponding parts of the library to automatically generate the Gnome
foot menu.  That way programmers can begin using it quickly, and
everyone is happy.

So.  People, please keep the UI discussions coming, and please stop
all the flaming on this list.

  Federico