Re: gtk icewm?

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

Well, it's certainly not going to hurt GNOME to experiment around
with its GUI.  On one hand, I think GNOME should aspire to
combine the best elements of the commercial GUI's in the best way
possible (perhaps discarding a few good features if they don't
fit in with the whole).  On the other hand, we need to nurture
the more radical ideas that will help give GNOME that extra zip
and allow it to live up to its potential.  We need a solid left
wing and a solid right wing.

I would say three of the most important qualities of a good GUI
are consistency, convenience, and scalability (off the top of my
head):

-Consistency is obvious: an "interface" implies that it provides
the same types of services to the front ends of various
applications, etc.  

-Without convenience, users will tend to migrate to the more
usable GUI's.  Plus, that's what a UI is _for_, right?  So we
don't have to type everything in from the command line?  

-And finally, we need scalability (i.e. extensibility) so that
when the GUI matures and expands, we can do it gracefully, and
not have to redesign the GUI to accomodate new situations.  This
last one is the tough pickle, and it's a little harder to
quantify.  It's more a measure of the GUI's potential.

Anyway, just trying to stir up the pot a little...
John

P.S.--Is this discussion what the gnome-gui-list is for?  I don't
know--I'm asking...


raster@redhat.com wrote:
> 
> On 18 May, robert havoc pennington shouted:
> ->
> ->  On Mon, 18 May 1998, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> ->  >
> ->  > > when comparing menu popup speeds to say, gtk.. but IMO icewm is
> ->  > > currently too win95ish for Gnome.
> ->  >
> ->  > I believe that arguing on the basis of how similar something is to
> ->  > Windows 95 is wrong.  We should be basing our arguments on the
> ->  > capabilities and the benefits.
> ->  >
> ->
> ->  Yes! This is an excellent point. Just because the overall Windows OS is
> ->  kind of yucky doesn't mean we can't steal shamelessly from their
> ->  highly-paid UI researchers. We should copy Windows, Mac, NeXT, X, and
> ->  everything else we can think of to create a nice, familiar synthesis with
> ->  the best of each. In a real sense Different == Bad when it comes to look
> ->  and feel.
> 
> again a misnoma. different is neither bad nor good - it depends what
> new stuff you have. if beinf different was bad a GUi would have never
> been invented - terminals wouldnt exits.,. we'd be uing computers with
> switches and led's as output. Being diferent and having the guts to try
> somehitng new drives innovation and features. don't be afraid of being
> different. Embrace it.
> 
> The ramannt wave of "lets COPY a commercial GUI" that is spreading
> through the linux world is rather sad - it shows that there is little
> imagination and any form of resarche or willingness to branch off and
> at the very least TRY and do better. It is this effor of trying to do
> better and probably in the process look different and act differently
> that is goign ot differetiate GNOME from KDE and MacOs and windows etc.
> It is goign to be what attracts people to it - a GUi that has FRESH
> ideas - not just the old ones recycled. This may involve bastardisting
> current ideas and meshing them - but do nto restrict ourselves to what
> has alreday been done.