Re: xscreensaver capplet.

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

On 30 Jul 2001 13:24:56 -0700, Jamie Zawinski wrote:
> Chema Celorio wrote:
> > 
> >>> Can you take a look at the the GUI we have now and comment on what
> >>> you don't agree with.
> >
> > This is how the new capplet looks :
> > http://www.gnome.org/~chema/screensaver.png
> > This is how the new gnomecc looks :
> > http://www.gnome.org/~chema/new-control-center.png
> 
> I assume that double-clicking on display modes in the list brings up
> another dialog, or something?  What does that one look like?

http://www.gnome.org/~chema/gnomecc_3.png

> 
> My comments:
> 
> The scaled down preview is a bad idea.  I want the textual description
> to be there.

I don't agree. I believe that a visual representation is a lot better than
a textual one. I think users prefer to see an aproximation of what a
screensaver looks like rather than to have to read about it. I don't
understand why you don't like the idea of a preview window. On your first
mail you name 1 visual aspect and 4 techinical ones for not using a preview.
You say that you thought "wow, what a boring screensaver, it just spastically
blits colored circles around." but doesn't a textual representation sound a
lot more boring than a preview ? I think so.

About the technical aspects i am not concerned , we can and should fix the
technical problems. We should design the apps based on what we believe is
best for the user, not on what our current code can do. If the code has
problems we should fix them.

> I really, really want checkboxes in the list next to the hacks, so that
> you can enable and disable them right there.  

checkboxes apear when the users selects "Random (checked screensavers)"

> I dislike the "one
> screensaver at a time" option, as I said, that's completely contrary to
> the intent of xscreensaver.  Avoiding that mode of operation is the
> reason I *wrote* xscreensaver ten years ago.

But users can select what they want. If they don't want one screensaver
at a time they can select another mode.

> 
> It's nice that you fit it all on one page, but that's only possible
> because you stripped down the options so much.  

Correct, one of my goals in GNOME has been removing the
extra-configuration that a lot of apps have. The control center
reorganization, among other things, is another effort to remove advanced
configuration options that users don't need/want. 

> Here is how I would like to proceed:
> 
>    - you tell me what changes you think I should make to
>      xscreensaver-demo;
>    - we reach some agreement about that;
>    - I make those changes;
>    - you replace your capplet with xscreensaver-demo.
> 
> Ok?

I think we want a different program. There are going to be a lot of things
that we don't agree on, I can't expect you to agree on every detail on how
we believe that this should be done and v.s. I really don't want to spend
long threads discussing technical details trying to reach an agreement. I
don't have the energy nor the time to do so. The reason is simple, it is
going to be hard for us to agree on everything regarding the user interface,
what is best for the user and how the code should work internaly. For example,
the new capplets are linking with bonobo and bonobo-conf, I can imagine how
much mails we are going to have to write to decide upon this kind of issues. 

So, i would rather aproach the problem in a different way. The main problem
i see is that you are getting bug reports from users which you don't want to
get, is this statement accurate ?. I would prefer if we just deal with the
techinical problems and fix those, fixing the real cause of problems. We can
both benefit from imporving the robutstness of our code.

Right now we both have working code that works and fits our needs. It has
even been tested by the users already. So i would like to come up with a
list of problems and start looking into fixing the technical aspects. 

So if you like this proposal we can start writing a list of things that we 
need to fix. Both on the capplet and on xscreensaver. 

regards,
Chema