[Fwd: RE: Your final comments on gswitchit in 2.4...]

["Sergey V. Oudaltsov" <sergey oudaltsov clients ie>]

-----Пересланное сообщение-----
From: Murray.Cumming@Comneon.com
To: sergey.oudaltsov@clients.ie
Cc: jdub@perkypants.org, jrb@redhat.com, jody@gnome.org, release-team@gnome.org
Subject: RE: Your final comments on gswitchit in 2.4...
Date: 23 Jun 2003 18:40:02 +0200

> From: Sergey V. Oudaltsov [mailto:sergey.oudaltsov@clients.ie] 
> >>per-window (that's 
> >>only possible with the applet on panel).
> > Yes, I can see how that might be useful, but it might not 
> be essential
> > functionality.
> It is _essential_. Remove it - and you lose, ... 2/3 or Russian 
> gswitchit users

Sooner or later someone should explain to us why Russians are a special case
here.

> >>- Configurable pixmaps for the applet
> > Why is this necessary?
> I wrote before - so people want to have their own flags. 

Doesn't each country have it's own keyboard layout anyway? Can you give us
the real-world examples where this is actually necessary? I guess there must
be one, but maybe if we know what it is then we can think of a better
solution. I would prefer to use no flag (or all suitable flags) where no
single flag is suitable.

> But probably 
> this can be replaced with just "use layout name as flag" 
> checkbox (did 
> you see the way standard Windows keyboard indicator works?).

It depends which version of Windows you mean.

> I can 
> consider this change.
> 
> > Again, why is this necessary?
> Not necessary at all. That is why no GUI for it. But some 
> people asked 
> me for the screen blinking (thanging gamma for a fraction of 
> second). I 
> gave them this feature - so now they can launch whatever they want (I 
> laughed at them and offered to send email to manager "Bill 
> switched to 
> Russian!" - "Bill switched to English!":)

This is certainly not anything that we would want to maintain in GNOME.
 
> > I think it is sensible to start with basic functionality 
> and add features
> > when people make a good case for them, instead of starting 
> with everything
> > and then dealing with the complaints when you remove them.
> Well, currently gswitchit covers 99% of user requests I ever had (not 
> always directly, like with command execution). But if I start 
> removing 
> features now - people will eat me alive (they will travel 
> from Russia to 
> Ireland to do it:)

Maybe not if you don't call it gswitchit, but just call it part of GNOME. 

> Also, there is another feature people ask - configurable 
> "initial group" 
> per-app. For example, in terminal it would be "USA", in 
> AbiWord it would 
> be "Russian". Not now, but probably at some point (probably only in 
> GConf directly - without GUI - at least initially).

At some point a maintainer has to say No to new niche features.

> Well, you can say all this is bloat - but if users really 
> want it, why 
> cannot we give it to them (and if users want it - probably it is not 
> really bloat)?

Let's not have that discussion all over again. We are GNOME, not KDE. We
don't have insane clock preferences just because somebody somewhere believes
it's necessary.

Murray Cumming
murrayc@usa.net
www.murrayc.com
-- 
Sergey

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