Re: [gtk-list] Re: vi bindings for text widgets

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 1998 at 07:35:26PM -0400, Pat Rogan wrote:
> What if there was one big GTK_EDIT_MODE variable in the ~/.gtk file that
> had exactly 3 options?
> 
>   emacs
>   vi
>   windoz
> 
> Then EVERYBODY'S happy.  Those who want to use something that they are
> familiar with can, and those who are afraid of letting the user do
> things the way they want get to limit the user's choices to "3".

why should we tell the user what to do ... I don't get that logic ...
saying: you WILL use that because we think it's better and we don't want
you to have choices doesn't work for me in the linux/unix world ... there
have allways been choices and there has always been complete
configurability ... why should we go to the mac/windows type of world
where the programmer decides what's better for the user ... the only
argument for non-configurability is if the programmer doesn't have time
to implement it or just doesn't care enough ... excerting effort to
reduce configurability is IMHO the worst thing a person can do ...

an example .... my dad and his colegue wrote a simple program in BASIC
it calculated stuff about proteins and peptides ... but for some very
weird reason ... (them not being hackers, but chemists) they went around
setting arbitrary limits on things .. for example there was a limit on
the size of a protein set at 3000 although the implementation could go a
lot longer ... the explanation was that noone will want to use longer
ones since it would be useless ... about 2 years ago somebody complained
and they took that limit out ... turns out that just because they think
that such long proteins are not usefull ... other people don't seem to
think so ...

purpuselly limitting configurability is the same thing ... 

yes people want a simple consisten interface for the newbies ... that's
fine .. the defaults will be the same ... but why should I not be allowed
to change it to something else ... I like vi ... I want vi bindings ...
and I want all my apps to look like athena (I do plan to write an athena
theme ... for some reason I don't mind it and sometimes like athena look
(not how it works however)

George

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
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