Re: [HIG] Getting recommendations back to developers

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 9:10 PM -0600 8/15/01, John Fleck wrote:
> To emphasize what (I think) Maciej is saying here: I think bugzilla
> reports are necessary but not sufficient. They're necessary because
> it's the best way to track the issues, but not always sufficient,
> because not all maintainers are equally attentive to bugzilla.
>
> That means direct contact with the maintainers also may be needed,
> with patches whenever possible.

Yeah.  Of course, this (and Maciej's suggestions for usability bug 
reports) really apply to _any_ bug report for a free software 
application, not just "usability" bugs.  There really is no 
fundamental difference between a usability bug and a "traditional" 
bug except that the latter generally has more obviously-bad effects.

I think the core problem is not one of the means of reporting 
problems; it's the same problem that the GUP was created to address, 
which is that developers don't assign the same importance to 
usability as to other software priorities.  Usability bugs should be 
reported in exactly the same way as other bugs: via bugzilla, via 
direct contact with the maintainers, and with patches when possible 
and appropriate.  We (by which I mean the GUP and not the HIG core 
team) then need to continue working on educating developers as to why 
usability _is_ important as a goal and why these bugs should not 
automatically be dismissed.

My 2 cents,
Adam
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