Re: Meld "irritants"

[Scott Kostyshak <scott kostyshak gmail com>]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:27 AM, V S Rawat <vsrawat gmail com> wrote:

> overall, meld user interface is totally non-intuitive and so are various
> options.

There are things that I find non-intuitive, but *overall* I find the
meld user interface to be very intuitive.

> Hope you would go through the content of what feedback I give and not get
> purturbed by the tone.

I'm not sure if you're open to feedback or not, but in case you are I
will give it. Background: I am just a (very happy) meld user and I
lurk in the shadows a bit on the mailing list. I thought the tone of
the email was not too bad. The main part that I thought was rude was
<<It is not a bug or mistake, it is ultimate "lack of consideration"
on behalf of developers. Seems, You didn't even use Meld yourself in
real life even once.>>. The rest I thought was not too bad. However, I
thought that a lot of your considerations could be framed more
positively. Instead of the approach of "why does Meld do this? It is a
stupid approach", you would be amazed how more likely your suggestion
would be taken into consideration if you frame it like "I think it
would really help users if Meld did this...". Perhaps that's just not
your style though, and that's fine: There's no point in pretending to
be nice or to frame something in a positive way if you just don't
believe it.

Apart from the tone, I thought your email was a fine body of an email.
What in my opinion is lacking is a more appropriate introduction or
conclusion. In your email, you make a few suggestions along the lines
that the developer(s) of Meld simply do not care about their users
(otherwise they would have implemented the interface you suggest). I
guess if you truly believe this, then your email is as it should be
because it reflects your opinions. If the meld developer(s) really
don't care about their users, then yeah you should be upset. But I
urge you to think very hard before attacking the intentions of the
developers. Why do you think they spend so much of their free time on
Meld, if not for the users? This is why I would suggest an
introduction or conclusion along the lines of "Thank you very much for
your effort on Meld. I really appreciate the time you spend on it."
Again, if that's not true, then I certainly would not recommend you to
put it. But if it is true, it is good to put. Note that in the phrase
that I suggest you would not be saying anything about whether Meld is
good software. Maybe you think it's bad software with a horrible
interface. But you at least recognize that the developer(s) are trying
and have good intentions and you appreciate the time that they put
into at least *trying* to produce a good software.

I've seen a lot of open source projects, and in my opinion Meld is
*the* most impressive one-person development projects. I know it is
not completely one person, but it is mostly one person. I'm amazed by
what the developer(s) have managed to accomplish, by their
documentation, their bug fixes, their effort at supporting multiple
platforms, their dealing with different GTK versions, their
participation on the mailing list, and perhaps most of all by the
quality of the software. They do it all. Much respect to them!

Let me conclude this email by saying that I really appreciate that you
(Rawat) put in the time and effort to write some detailed suggestions.
Although I do not agree with the tone (as expressed above), I am glad
that you gave some specific suggestions. As a developer, and also as a
teacher, what hurts the most is when someone says a vague negative
statement without giving any specifics. Thank you for not doing that.

Best regards to all,

Scott