i've asked the question; now i'll give my opinion

[sungod <as387 yfn ysu edu>]

the question i've been begging everyone to answer is, what line are we
drawing? are we aimed at compatibility with existing guis, or are we
aimed at good design? here is my response to this question:

Samuel Solon wrote:

> It was my understanding that gnome was designed to be evolutionary, not
> revolutionary. To produce a free (in the Open Source definition) version of
> a straightforward desktop.

to which i would respond, firstly, why _not_ revolutionary, and
secondly, if not gnome, who? i'll gladly go join their project instead.

lastly, maybe it's time for those of you arguing _for_ compatibility
over good design to start stating exactly where you want to draw that
line. for example, raster's antialiased fonts in enlightenment are quite
revolutionary for x: it is not an easily implemented change; it requires
rewriting a large portion of x or implementing it at windowmanager level
instead (the latter of which has been the chosen route). this is hardly
evolutionary; it's actually kind of a "kludge" workaround to a
fundamental limitation of x. yet, since the workaround was deemed
possible, raster went ahead and coded it anyway (and God bless him for
it). this is the kind of attitude i would like to see pervade across the
face of gnome development, the attitude that says "i don't care what you
tell me i can't do; i'm going to do it anyway because it's right."

> I have heard this stated by people on the mailing list and wish I could
> find a stronger statement of it than the following, from the Gnome
> Manifesto (http://www.gnome.org/about/manifesto.html):
> 
>     "It seeks to impose only that order necessary for consistency."
> 
> This doesn't say consistency with what.

so we agree that currently existing documentation is less than concise
in determining the answer i've been searching for. however, let me point
out that since existing os's are not necessarily consistent themselves
(the hall of shame includes examples of apple and microsoft both
breaking their own ui guidelines) and that the manifesto does not
specify consistency with good or bad design, we could construe this as
an argument _against_ trying to follow the other guys. :)

> I would love to see a revolutionary system based on interesting new
> techniques but gnome isn't it.

if the "interesting new techniques" comprise better design than what
other ui's have now, why shouldn't we?

> I had no intention of being "inflammatory". I was rather addressing the
> view that it would make a statement. Views such as:
> 
> "IMHO, it would be the kind of nifty GUI feature that attracts
> people to an environment"
> 
> and
> 
> "What about the requirement that it just plain look cool? =)"

that's fair.

although, i do miss that attitude from my days as a mac os fanatic... :P
note, too, that apple did a lot of stuff that was "fun" and still
managed to compile the authoritative handbook on user interface design
anyway, so let's not completely dismiss the "fun" stuff without checking
out the pros and cons as well.

> I guess it all boils down to what the goals of gnome are. I don't think it
> is to advance the "state of the art" in UI design although I would
> certainly like to see someone do that.

well, i hate to see my question misunderstood like this: the point is
not to advance the state of the art nor to shun it; this would be akin
to "being different just for the sake of being different." the point, of
course, is that the gnome desktop should be the most useable desktop in
existence ever. if this involves copying what other people do, i'm okay
with that. if it means innovating and doing something nobody's seen
before (but which is instantly understood [for tier 1] or improves
efficiency [for tier 2]), let's do it.

how many opportunities are we going to get to design an entirely new gui
for an up-and-coming operating system that is backed by major corporate
entities and is taking the world by storm? it's crucial that we seize
this opportunity to "design right" _now_.

the above is my opinion; we need goals before we can reach them. if this
boils down to having the coders who do the actual work and the red hat
labs folks who head the project and run the website come in and break a
tie or something, i'm ready to call them in right _now_ just to clarify
our goals so we can get back to work. federico, are you reading this?

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