Il giorno gio, 01/09/2011 alle 21.42 +0300, Pasha R ha scritto: > On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Adam Tauno Williams > <awilliam whitemice org> wrote: > > On Thu, 2011-09-01 at 18:16 +0300, Pasha R wrote: > >> My problem is that shell is simply inconvenient to use and insulting > >> attitude of developers > > > > I don't feel insulted at all. > Good for you. I find an attitude commonly expressed on this and some > other lists "we know better what you should want" insulting. I'm very sorry, and I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that nobody meant to insult you (the rest of this mail, otoh, is my personal view). Our attitude is not "we know better", instead it tries to look at problems of the average computer user (real problems, reported by years of usability study), and to solve in a different and innovative way. By applying fundamental shifts in the workflow (that we acknowledge require some initial migration cost), we focus on solving the basic underlying problems, rather than adapt ourselves to the solutions our users developed by themselves, absent a coherent usability design. I concede that our solutions are not meant for everybody, as there may be people with different conflicting requirements, but we're still convinced they apply for the vast majority of our target user base. On the other hand, trying to cater for too many use patterns and workflow would increase the complexity of the overall system, not just in terms of code (which is not irrelevant) but also in terms of usability. Options have a huge cost, because users will either flee, scared by the the risk of breaking everything, or they will start asking and craving the documentation, just to find out it was something completely useless to them, because it broke the basic design pattern. Or even worse, the option could be exposing what is really an implementation detail (such as the panel applet configuration in 2.*). Nevertheless, as we still want to enlarge our user base and grow our market share (with the ultimate goal of supplanting proprietary software around the world), we are providing you with a powerful instrument that basically allows you to build your own shell: extensions. It's true, the system was not complete in 3.0, and it required manual interaction as well as not having a complete repository. On the other hand, in 3.2 installing extensions will be as simple as going to extensions.gnome.org, finding what you need and pressing a button. We already have extensions that restore much of the GNOME 2 functionality (a dock, an application menu, a workspace switcher, a window based alt-tab, just to name a few), and we expect the number to increase release after release. And of course, since you quote Linus, if you don't find something that suits, you know what to do. Hoping this clarified our vision and hoping that there won't be any further misunderstanding, Giovanni Campagna
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