Re: Meld "irritants"

[V S Rawat <vsrawat gmail com>]

Thanks for your views, suggestion and guidance.

I realize that my "outburst" was uncalled for. I should have written 
more objetively, without getting carried away by my feelings.

The time it was wasting for forcing unwanted things on me had me irritated.

After having tried dozens of software, I have zeroed in on kdiff3 and 
meld, so I find these two software far superior to all other 
countersparts, and that is why I use it for months and bothered to write 
such a long list of problems I am facing in it.

Nobody would a software for months and write such a long list to 
undermine your great work or just to criticize.

due to windows executable not made available, some of these problems 
might have got resolved in future releases but I didn't know as i 
couldn't use them.

Thanks again.
--
Rawat

On 9/1/2017 3:23 AM, Scott Kostyshak wrote:
> 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