Re: Spatial Mode Window Cluttering and Possible Solutions -- EOT

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 08:15 -0700, Raul Acevedo wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 19:29 +0900, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> 
> > You guys realize that the nautilus developers are ignoring this thread,
> > and when Alex gets back from vacation, the first thing he is going to do
> > is delete it, right? Have we accomplished anything? It all seems rather
> > masturbatory to me.
> 
> Good point...
> 
> Well, lurking Nautilus developers... what *do* you think of this thread?
> I'd be curious to hear Alex's opinion when he is back too.

Well, what can I say... 

I try to read most threads about spatial nautilus, to get an idea of
what people think about it and see what ideas people come up with (even
though in general such threads quickly become way too emotional, and
often very demotivating). 

I very rarely reply to such threads though, unless I have some very
specific question about the post. I'm really not a great interaction/ui
designer, so I can't just read about an idea and immediately judge
whether it would work well or not. If I were to post random ideas I
have, or endorse some idea posted on a list/forum, people tend to think
thats what Nautilus will be, even when they are likely wrong. Also, if I
replied to everything related to spatial I'd be arguing about it 90% of
my time.

I take a very conservative stance on behaviour changes, because 1) once
you change something, or add something its very very hard to remove
it/change it back, and 2) there is a certain something to be said for a
piece of software that lots of people use all the time to stay somewhat
constant. Its not like someone just posted about the spatial idea and we
immediately jumped on it. It took years from the first person talked
about the spatial idea until we started implementing it, and this was a
feature that other OSes already had implemented, so we had experience to
draw from.

So, my approach to this is: I try read a lot of what people say on this
subject, remember the best ideas and talk about them with the other
maintainers and other people who's judgement I trust. All this sort of
stays around in the back of my head all the time, and eventually some
ideas/proposals may prove good enough and we'll implement them.

The best way to influence us is to post your ideas, trying to describe
them as well as possible, and thinking about the details of them.
Getting into huge fights with someone who disagrees with your idea is
not so interesting to read, but taking such input and having it in your
description as negative consequences of your approach is good (no
solution have only positive sides). Also, even though you think your
idea is the best thing since sliced bread, don't except us to
immediately pick it up and implement it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a witless flyboy gentleman spy in drag. She's a time-travelling paranoid 
snake charmer with the soul of a mighty warrior. They fight crime!