Re: one question and one proposal

[robert havoc pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Tue, 16 Jun 1998, George wrote:
> > - a way to reach decisions: dictator or democracy, but someone has to 
> >   say "flame war over, this is how it is"
> 
> I say dictator for most apps .... (the maintainer of that app is the
> dictator) ... and somewhat of a democracy for the gnome-libs ...
> 
> we don't wanna have long dicussions .. it's better if we just write code
> and then figure out if one was right or wrong ...
> 
> whoever is doing the code decides :)
>

I mean for the style guide - for example, is it "Preferences..." or
"Properties..." and is this menu item on the File or Edit menu?

Really it makes no difference, as long as all the apps are the same
(barring any special circumstances). Nonetheless someone has to flip a
coin and pick one or the other. Part of an app being a Gnome app should be
that the app follows the style guide (unless there's a good reason not
to). Otherwise it's just an app that uses the Gnome libraries. 

I don't think it's a big deal until Gnome is almost finished; it's trivial
to fix this little stuff later. But it's the kind of final polish that
will make the desktop really professional-feeling, so I hope it happens
before Gnome 1.0.
 
> well for small changes I think this is happening ... for large changes
> and revisions ... it would probably better to talk to the maintainer
> before doing a large change ... maybe the author had something similiar
> in mind or something different ...
>

I think it's not happening in lots of little cases where there's no clear
policy... I agree it'd be good to talk to the maintainer, I think the
important thing is just that not following the style guide be considered a
bug, until a good case is made that the style doesn't fit a particular
application. i.e. "I think the style guide is wrong" can never be a
justification for not following it; that's only a justification for
changing the style guide. "The style guide doesn't make sense for my app"
is a fine justification for not following it.

One good thing about the style team fixing the problems is that they're
then writing code, and people feel better about it. Patches are always
preferred to suggestions.
 
> but for small inconsistencies among gnome apps .. yes it would be a good
> idea to go through the apps and make em all consistent with the style
> guide
> 

First the style guide needs some major updating, last time I looked at it
anyway. I think it was written before most of gnome-libs, and it's all
just a little too theoretical. When coding, I'd like a nice, practical
checklist with lots of references to particular Gnome widgets and
facilities.

Havoc Pennington ==== http://pobox.com/~hp