Re: "Official" gnome window manager

[Marcus Butler <marcusb wspice com>]

On 13 Feb 1998, Jim Pick wrote:

> 
> I have dealt with many novice users too.  It is true that they want
> absolute consistency.
> 
> Unfortunately, they want absolute consistency with what they already
> know, which may be Win95, Win3.1 or the Mac.
> 
> Unless we do an interface and window manager that matches Win95
> exactly, the average user will have to spend some time to acquaint
> themselves with the new system.
> 
> That should kill the "absolute consistency" argument, I hope.  :-)

 Actually, no, it doesn't.  Your argument reminds me of Pascal's Wager,
which only turns out to be correct if all of his various assumptions turn
out to be correct.  You assume that everyone using Gnome will be coming
from Win32, Win16, or Macintosh.  That might not be true.  I think new
users will be perfectly willing to learn *one* new UI if they want to use
Gnome.  However, they will not want to use Gnome if one Gmome system looks
or behaves differently that another.  A very large part of a desktop is
consistency, that is the bottom line.  Point out a successful desktop
system that support 3 different window managers.  In spite of all the
MS-bashing here, in case you guys haven't noticed, MS is doing fine with
one WM.

 Marcus