Re: Comparative review between Gnome and KDE in UK PC-Mag

[sungod <sungod atdot org>]

Tom Gilbert (gilbertt@tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk)'s email of 07/30/99 
18:10 said:

>* Tom Tromey (tromey@cygnus.com) [990730 22:08]:
>> >>>>> "Tom" == Tom Gilbert <gilbertt@tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>> 
>> Tom> Things like not realising that mouse-focus behaviour is a wm
>> Tom> setting and can be *changed* (as the reviewer did) is something
>> Tom> that should not count against us in a review, or in the
>> Tom> experience of a new user.
>> 
>> This also argues that the defaults should be set to match new-user
>> (perhaps even coming-from-Windows-user) expectations.
>> 
>> Tom
>
>Definitely. This is a major contributing factor toward the success of
>KDE.

I guess this depends on whether you define "success" as most-used, or 
best-designed.:) After all, things like this will be defined (and 
rightly so) more by the way distributions set it up than by the way GNOME 
developers send it out the door.

As far as learning from this review, there are a few points to be taken, 
yes... but don't ever lose sight of the design basics. For instance, when 
the reviewer complained that the file manager didn't parse HTML, the 
question should be, "now why didn't GMC fire up Binford HTML-Renderer 
5000 (TM), which the reviewer had selected as his default HTML viewer, 
when he double-clicked on an HTML file?" and not, "gee, should we perhaps 
add that bloat to our light, fast, and well-connected file manager?"

And sometimes you DO simply have to let the idiocy roll off your back. 
What are you going to do when a reviewer blames you for problems with his 
window manager, his distribution, his ISP being a rat, or someone pissing 
in his cheerios the morning he wrote his review? It happens. It sucks. 
We'll all get over it.

</twocents>

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