SV: A call to action

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

There is also some DOD docs and NATO docs to look into.
As at least NATO is leaning heavilly on GNU they should
start sharing.. 

Shure there are some people in Den Haag reading this ;)

John

-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: Heikki Keranen [mailto:heikrnen ees2 oulu fi]
Sendt: 16. oktober 2000 19:07
Til: GNOME-Gui
Emne: Re: A call to action



colin z robertson wrote:
> True, but consider, MS has never given any guidance to Windows
> developers about how the UI should be done. I think that if (when) we

Wrong. There are guidelines (also in online html form) at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/books/winguide/welcome.htm

If we are going to create our own guidelines, we should also have a look
at Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines:
http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/dg/index.htm

And if the KDE guidelines are freely modifiable we could directly adopt
parts of it!


I think we don't need formal process in GNOME and it's UI development. I
understand that formalism means that we obey the standards and
guidelines and process carefully. Many companies have a formal process
even though it might not have a sense. I agree that in open source
community that will never work. Open source community is a classroom
example of informal process. 

The informalism thus is not against documenting the process, writing
down guidelines, doing GUI design etc. In opensource world we should not
write rules, instead we should write recommendations and guidelines how
to do things to get the best result. Documented process helps newbies to
get involved in the community and reduces unnecessary work.

And about the UI design. I agree that we should make the transition from
UI design to programming more smooth. One thing which irritates me in
this list is that usually people do not use graphics to present their
ideas (eg. links to pictures in their homepages). And I'am guilty too!
Sometimes it is very hard to try to understand what people mean. For
programmers this might be even more irritating and fustrating (easier to
do own design decisions than to read this list).

To make things a bit easier we should have some kind vector based
drawing program with gnome UI component templates. In Windows world my
favorite is Visio Professional and it's Windows 95 UI template. How big
task would it be to implement GNOME UI template to DIA?

How many programmers know that UI hit squad even exists? We need
programmers to come to this list and people in this list to go directly
to mailing lists of projects where the work is done. We have to do great
designs to convince programmers to implement them. We also have to
remember that the results are not becoming into reality very fast. Often
the whole architecture needs to be changed to create a new UI. But I'am
convinced that when programmers have seen great designs, some day they
probably adopt it in their code. Great possibilities for UI design are
at the points when the architecture is redesigned (and I think this does
not happen very often). So we should monitor the discussion lists for
new projects and major redesigns and get involved in those. In the mean
time we should collect user requirements and needs and let the mind fly
and create a visions of future applications.

Good UI designer needs knowledge about users, UI issues and the
technology. So we should also learn GTK and linux/unix secrets and
consider what is needed to implement new UI. That's why I made my first
C-language Gnome program yesterday! 

So let's get into action!

	Heikki

_______________________________________________
gnome-gui-list mailing list
gnome-gui-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-gui-list