Re: RE: A call to action

[Jim Garrison <garrison users sourceforge net>]

Hello,

I think that the appropriate thing would be to assign a programmer to a
single project.  The person could get involved with the intentions of
tweaking the UI.  There is already somewhat of a TODO list on the hitsquad
page, and now there just needs to be programmers to implement those tasks,
and somebody to organize it all.  It doesn't take an extreme hacker to
rework an interface (most of the time), and it could be a good way for
people less experienced to get involved.

My $0.02,
Jim Garrison

On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Gerry Chu wrote:
> Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 19:09:38 -0700
> To: "GNOME-Gui" <gnome-gui-list gnome org>
> From: "Gerry Chu" <gerrychu bigfoot com>
> Subject: RE: A call to action
> 
> > Also, we can't expect developers to hand over control of their
> > project's ui to us without first seeing what we'll do to it. They'd
> > have to be mad to do so.
> 
> Of course.  Makes perfect sense.
> 
> > Personally I'd be happier to see a more open and consensual approach.
> 
> Yes, I would like this to be as much as an open process as possible.
> 
> > So far the open-source community has had reasonable success at working
> > to standards simply because everyone agrees that they're the right
> > thing, not because they've been told to by a committee.
> 
> I think all redesigns should be done with developer input.  This should
> prevent developers from feeling like they've been ordered implement some
> design against their own will.  What I mean is, the maintainer /
> developers
> should be part of the group itself that redesigns the component in
> question.
> Hopefully, at the end of the process, everyone will feel like they've
> done
> the right thing.
> 
> > I think we'd do better to tell people what we think and wait for them
> to
> see the
> > correctness of it. Then we let natural selection take care of those
> > who ignore us.
> 
> Look at ms windows.  _Horrible_ design compared to Apple. It sells well
> though.
> 
> > I really don't think that without doing the coding ourselves we can
> > have anything more than an advisory role. Anything else really goes
> > against the grain of open-source development. Right now we're not
> > having much effect because we aren't doing much communicating. I'd
> > suggest trying harder on the communications front and then seeing if
> > that gets us anywhere.
> 
> Yes, it is an uphill battle.  That's why the process for implementing
> GNOME
> ui design should be written down and agreed to by all.  That's also one
> of
> the reasons why I bought a C programming book yesterday, just to hedge my
> bets.  As for communications, you mean advertising what our list does,
> inviting more hackers to join the list, and seeing if any of our designs
> turn up in the next release of GNOME?  It might work.  But I'd rather
> make
> sure what we design actually get into the finished project, to save us
> from
> doing unneeded work.  Please say more about your idea, though, as I was
> just
> going off an assumption.
> 
> > > Finally, when the component is redesigned, it would be
> > > put up on the www or shown to the greater mailing list itself
> > for comment.
> >
> > But what would be the point of that? Surely the list should be where
> > the discussion starts. There's no point discussing something at the
> > end of the design period.
> 
> Well, I might be wrong, but since we're losing and gaining new people on
> this mailing list often, the committee people would agree to a time
> committment.  The list-only people wouldn't have to.  I mean, look at the
> list archives from a year ago, and see how many people you recognize that
> still post once in a while.  It's hard to get a team up to design the ui
> if
> people are constantly coming in and dropping out.
> 
> But by no means do I envison this committee as some "elite" thing.  As I
> said before, the only reason I came up with this committee was high
> turnover
> rate on the list.  But if everyone on this list now can make such a time
> and
> participation committment, forget about the committee idea, and we'll
> just
> have all discussions on this list.
> 
> Oh, and the other reason I orginally seperated committee from list is
> committee would focus at one component at a time, and list would discuss
> whatever, whenever, though I think all committee people should subscribe
> to
> the list also.
> 
> But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Everything's still in the idea stage
> after
> all.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gerry
> 
> 
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