Re: GNOME Window Manager

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom infernal-iceberg com>]

lion lithtech com (2001-05-30 at 1624.51 -0700):
> Customizing Fonts

[...]

>   Let me emphasise; I'm not trying to suggest that we "take away" anything
> from the window managers community.

But it sounds like that. :]

>   Everything should be compatible.
>   But there should be a default GNOME window manager that is completely
> invisible.

Maybe we just need make "look" invisible. Or at least, make it what
new people expect without becoming dirty. By providing what they
already expect, it will look invisible, IMO. If it works, user will
not have to change anything, thus no need to hide (I apply this rule
to my Sendmail, I just know a pair of config options, and I ignore the
rest).

Speaking about Sawfish, it is just creating (or modifying or using) a
theme that use GTK+ config as base. SF's GTK theme could do that, with
some modifications for font, I believe. It currently uses the theme
colours at least.

Speaking about Nautilus... why it also has to ignore, by default, GTK
default font, instead of allow changes as a plus? I dunno how to fix
that one, sorry. But it seems to be a trend to harcode things in FM
(GMC was also "funny" about fonts ;] ).

>   By invisible, I mean one that the user need never ever even know about,
> recognize, see, hear about, invisible in all forms known unto Man, for All
> Times, All Ages, invisible unto Even the Mighty Lord Itself, though
> programmers might have to deal with it now and then, and snoopy sysadmins.

Advanced users (aka no programmers, no sysadmins) will also want to
poke. See, it is sounding again as take away. :]

OTOH, it seems new users have some kind of vertigo (sp?), cos they
think that as there are many options, they have to poke all them. And
as the defaults are messy, they will have to poke some, and then
problems begin.

>   This is what I mean, and why I believe it is important.
>   I don't think I have anything more I can say on this subject.
>   (Just watch, someone's going to prove me wrong... {;D}=)

No, just that IMO the problem is communication. :P

BTW, another note, in these tasks, coders publish what they want, and
packagers care about what the user sees. IMO just no packager has gone
to the point of smashing provided configs to make one new users could
want. Could next tests be done with a hacked SF's GTK theme, please?

I have a similar talk with a packager, I gave a solution, but he did
not want to include it as patch, only as core feature (thus adding
more load to coders). So we went nowhere in that front (the other
front is that I have been learning more lisp, and maybe finish a
working version soon). :[ :]

Summary: what about creating some configs with new users in mind, then
test them, and see if it was part of the problem? That means include
researching a bit in the field of avaliable expansions.

GSR