Re: Requirements in release

[Christopher Roy Bratusek <zanghar freenet de>]

Am Wed, 8 Jul 2009 14:15:37 -0700
schrieb Daniel Fetchinson <fetchinson googlemail com>:

> >> >> >> Why can't the packaged archive contain a reasonable configure
> >> >> >> script to begin with?
> >> >> >> [...]
> >> >> >> In any case the user experience could be increased greatly if
> >> >> >> the installation of sawfish would not involve all sorts of
> >> >> >> trickery, but the simple
> >> >> >> ./configure
> >> >> >> make
> >> >> >> make install
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> cycle on each of the dependencies (librep, rep-gtk, sawfish).
> >> >> >
> >> >> > ... well, normally it is shipped, somehow I forgot it for
> >> >> > 0.18.6 (...)
> >> >>
> >> >> Daniel Fetchinson is right.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > yep.
> >> >
> >> >> Chris, I'm sorry that we may rely too much on you, but the
> >> >> release is
> >> >
> >> > :/ sometimes I don't know if that is because you trust me that
> >> > much, or if you are moving away from sawfish, just like Sven (and
> >> > others) did.
> >> >
> >> > (Ehh, you is plural here, not you as in Teika)
> >> >
> >> >> important, especially "big ones" like sawfish-1.5. I wonder if
> >> >> you could prepare, say, a checklist of release procedure. (Of
> >> >> course it can contain a line or two of "Press Teika to do this
> >> >> tiresome job." I can't refuse. Ouch ;) Because there's an
> >> >> interval between big version changes, it's easy to forget this
> >> >> and that and etc., etc. It can also help at the maintainer-ship
> >> >> transfer.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Well, this checklist does (imaginarly) exist, but is not
> >> > failsafe, I'm just happy that it "just" happened to rep-gtk
> >> > 0.18.6, as there are only changes to the specfile (nothing else)
> >> > and 0.18.4 is enough for sawfish. It would have hurt much more
> >> > on librep or sawfish. But of course you're right, that this
> >> > should not happen again.
> >> >
> >> > ...
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> One more thing I'd like to point out is that the news items are
> >> >> terse. Just a delay of two weeks or so can make it far better.
> >> >> Clearly what lacks though there should be is the tab usage.  In
> >> >> fact, I was upset by the 1.5 release, and I quickly fixed a
> >> >> small manual on wiki: http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Tab
> >> >> At least, there should be the pointer in news.texi to it. Please
> >> >> put it on 1.5.1 / 1.6.
> >> >> (Yes, focus-revert is important, too, but to make it short, I
> >> >> skip it now.)
> >> >> Rewinding time a week, I was about to write the last cleanup of
> >> >> NEWS for 1.5.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > I'm sorry Teika, I wanted to do the release finally, as it
> >> > already delayed 4/5 weeks. But well, any improvement on this is
> >> > -of course- welcome, and for the next time: 1.6.0 is
> >> > definitively to be released on the 22nd of December, so feature
> >> > freeze is end of November and we can then better handle stuff
> >> > like that. For 1.5.x which is "only" a bugfix series this may
> >> > not be that important (except that stuff from 1.5.0 that's to be
> >> > improved).
> >> >
> >> >> For ordinary softwares, I expect things go out-of-box, or at
> >> >> least there accompanies a decent manual. If not, I curse,
> >> >> "d***, [...]".
> >> >>
> >> >> Because I like sawfish, this is not the case for me on sawfish,
> >> >> but PLEASE LISTEN, many users swear, and for them sawfish is not
> >> >> reputable.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > You're right.
> >> >
> >> >> Popularity is the power. Some reports, what's good and bad (or
> >> >> bugs). They help. Some subscribe ML. A few contribute in ML. A
> >> >> few of few develops.
> >> >>
> >> >> Anyway, thanks a lot for all. I was happy when I knew Sawfish
> >> >> was resurrected. Now we see a boom come. Another will come.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > A boom? You mean much more Sawfish users? Sorry, but if you're
> >> > thinking this way, I think you're wrong:
> >> >
> >> > GNOME 3 will not allow to use sawfish anymore! The GNOME Shell
> >> > will only work with this ultra-ugly MetaCity shit. So only KDE
> >> > will be a Desktop usable with sawfish. So we either wait for
> >> > Timo to get KDE4 running, check if we need to do some
> >> > improvements for better KDE4 Support and go trying to get some
> >> > KDE-Users to use sawfish, or build our own desktop, nothing like
> >> > GNOME/KDE, but like LXDE. Standalone Windowmanagers are not
> >> > suitable for most users theese days.
> >>
> >> Well, I actually have been using sawfish standalone without gnome
> >> or kde since it appeared in redhat. And I absolutely would like to
> >> keep using it as such in the future, regardless of what gnome and
> >> kde comes up with and I also don't care about so called minimalist
> >> desktops like lxde. I think sawfish by itself is just great and if
> >> it ain't broken don't fix it. The only extra thing I use is a
> >> trayer application, either one by the name 'trayer' or
> >> 'stalonetray'.
> >>
> >> > Oh well, and in the last half year there have more
> >> > unsubscriptions than subscriptions, but more users are monitoring
> >> > librep/rep-gtk/sawfish on sf.net, the IRC is pratically dead (I
> >> > only have had 2 (in words: two) discussions there the last half
> >> > year), so I would say: The userbase did not change that much.
> >> >
> >> > Common things noobs think about sawfish (not a joke):
> >> >
> >> > - Too many functions, which no one needs (the argument that you
> >> > just don't know them and therefore can't say if you would need
> >> > them is not of interest)
> >> > - Bad Usability (well this is that sawfish-ui is shit therefore
> >> >   sawfish is also shit thingy)
> >> > - It's not part of most Distros - can't be good
> >> >
> >> > Of course this is only a group of users and not all.
> >> >
> >> > This may sound pesimistic, but: I absolutely don't care how many
> >> > users are using Sawfish, for me it's the Ultimate Windowmanager,
> >> > regardless of anyone else, so you don't have to fear to get rid
> >> > of me :p
> >>
> >> I think what would attract the right kinds of users is a clear
> >> message about the intended audience. It should be clear from the
> >> project page who are expected to use sawfish and for whom probably
> >> it's not a good choice. If this policy is clear then the effort
> >> can go into convincing the right kinds of users and no effort will
> >> be wasted on preaching to people who will not care anyway. For
> >> example it might be the case that gnome 3 is not compatible with
> >> sawfish anymore, but is this a problem? I don't think so. I don't
> >> know how many gnome users use sawfish but I'd think much more are
> >> using sawfish standalone.
> >>
> >
> > Well Sawfish used to be the GNOME Window Manager, so there's still a
> > bunch of them using GNOME.
> 
> I estimate that users who use both gnome and sawfish are very few
> these days although I can't be sure of course. What I am sure though

From what I'm reading along the Web (Forum, blah) it may about 10% to
20%, but of course, I also can't be sure. What other WM should they use
to replace MetaCity? Right, (almost) no other choice. The key is to
bring those users, who currently use sawfish in GNOME to sawfish, even
if GNOME 3 is out, I don't care about the other GNOME Users, just about
those who currently are sawfish users, too.

> is that the number of such users will very soon go to next to zero. In
> other words any effort and energy that goes into making sawfish work
> well with gnome is pure waste.
> 
> > But well who's the "intended audience" of
> > sawfish? I would say: Advanced Users who want to have full control
> > over their WindowManager. Mainly, but not limited to theese.
> 
> Yes, I agree. I would also add that your definition of "intended
> sawfish audience" excludes gnome and kde users, or if it doesn't
> exclude them yet, they will soon do. This is simply because gnome and
> kde users do not want to have full control over their window manager.
> It's nothing bad, they can be programming wizards and advanced users,
> but as far as their Desktop Environment goes, they want gnome or kde
> to take care of everything.
> 
> Because of this I think not only gnome, but kde integration of sawfish
> is a waste of time. Of course if somebody wants to use kde with
> sawfish and as a result dedicates time to development, that's fine.
> He/she can do whatever he/she wants with his/her free time. But it's
> important to realize that this will not bring in new users or new
> developers.
> 

Timo is using KDE, so he's doing it so or so, therefore it's not wasted
time and will be added. While I'm thinking about dropping that GNOME
Integration Stuff. The KDE Integration are improvements to the current
behaviour, all sawfish users benefit from.

> >> An example: I'm pretty sure much more people use vim in text mode
> >> than in graphical mode together with the mouse. Vim has some
> >> graphical features but the main development effort and marketing
> >> effort goes into the text mode version, which is considered to be
> >> the 'real vim'. And vim is really attractive and great and popular
> >> among these kinds of users.
> >>
> >
> > I'm also a Vim User. Textmode of course :)
> >
> >> Similarly, the main effort I think should go into making sawfish as
> >> good as possible for standalone mode because these users are the
> >> natural audience who are really committed to sawfish.
> >>
> >
> > Of course, this "Desktop Environment" thing I spoke about is exactly
> > this, while DE does mean: panel (with menu/notificationarea the
> > later is important for me/pager/windowlist), background setter,
> > support for desktop icons, those 3 without relying on 3rdparties.
> > But well, of course it's already all possible with 3rdparties.
> > Perhaps it's just my point of view.
> 
> Exactly these things are the ones I absolutely don't care about
> (panel, menu, notification area, pager, background setter, desktop
> icons, etc) and don't use them at all. If I would care about these I
> would use gnome, kde or a minimalist desktop environment. The reason
> is that these software projects solve these problems very well, there
> is no need to reinvent the wheel.
> 

well, ok.

> But sawfish is unique in the sense that as a standalone window manager
> it's very flexible and great to use. This aspect should be reinforced,
> features stabilized, debugged, etc. All the rest should be I think
> left to software projects whose main focus is that. In those area
> sawfish can not compete. So it should not go into areas like that. It
> should stay where it is competitive, because there is no other great
> window manager that is standalone, fast and very flexible.
> 
> >> Looking forward to a long lifespan for sawfish!
> >>
> >
> > You're looking into a shiny future :)
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel
> 
>