Re: Conceptual models (was: Re: Detachable menubar idea)

[Jurgen Botz <jurgen botz org>]

raster@redhat.com wrote:
> that won't happen. GNOMe needsa to reach critial mass - it needs lots
> of development, apps and a usable environment.. we simply can't afford
> to suspend development for months [...]

Ah, sorry if it seemed like I was suggesting that... it was definitely
not what I had in mind.  By "taking a step back" I meant trying to
look at the bigger picture of GUI concepts, not slowing down development.

Raster, I agree with you on many things; I couldn't agree more that
configurability is a critical issue, for example, and I also agree 
that we don't want to do anything that makes a GUI more novice-
friendly at a cost to the power-user.  Hell no!  For example the
Mac menubar-at-top is a vestige from older days that is clearly 
not suitable to a modern OS and computing environment.  I am 
also not trying to say that we should copy the Mac or NeXTstep
in any way... both of these are well over a decade old.

What I /am/ saying is that overall the Mac, NeXT (and maybe Amiga,
don't have any first-hand experience there) GUIs have a feeling of
consistency and coherency that I think we need to achieve with 
Gnome as well.  And I believe we can do that without sacrificing
any power; in the contrary.  But configurability is not enough...
you can change the look and even the behaviors of GUI elements,
but you can't reconfigure the basic concepts that those elements
fit into... or maybe you /can/ in which case this becomes a concept
itself and needs to be delineated so that application writers 
can make it work for them.

--
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 \_/ u r g e n  /_ _) o t z      "Unix?  What's that?  Is that like Linux?"