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Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)
Nicholas Petreley trashes
GNOME 2.6 in a ComputerWorld column. "Of all the criticisms one
might lodge against GNOME, it's the hypocrisy of its design philosophy that
looms largest. GNOME grew out of the desire to free people from Microsoft's
ability to dictate what users can or can't do. Yet GNOME is built on the
premise that its developers are so much wiser than users when it comes to
navigating folders and setting colors that GNOME users shouldn't have a
choice in the matter."
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Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 16:27 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] While I disagree with his "regression" claim about gnome in general, he's dead right about spatial Nautilus. It was incredibly STUPID of the Gnome guys to make it the default and they deserve the most severe criticism for that incredible, almost inconceivable, lapse of judgement.Yes, I've heard the arguments for spatial and not a one of them makes any sense. And yes, I have used spatial and tried to like it. But the fact is that it is useless. -Steve Bergman
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 12:26 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] Why should it not be the default? There is some chance that your opinionmay not represent everyone else's. And as long as we are talking about aesthetic decisions I really hate Windows-style file management. The only thing worse is a compromise where each directory is opened in a separate windows but they aren't spatial.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 16:08 UTC (Tue) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link] Quite simply, the only problem with spatial mode is that there is no easy way, at least built-in to the default GNOME environment, of changing this setting. Instead, we are required to delve into the depths of the GConf database, or use a utility like COG to handle it. Changing of this setting should really have been present in the File Management preferences dialog, rather than having to dig for it. Personally, though, I find spatial easier to deal with, and I've always preferred the old 'browse-in-a-single-window' approach. Haven't quite figured out why, though, although I suspect that it has to do with the fact that Nautilus has never quite satisfactorily handled the browse mode so far. The fact that spatial mode is significantly faster probably has something to do with it, too.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 16:36 UTC (Mon) by rriggs (subscriber, #11598) [Link] I've decided that the only way to explain the regression of GNOME over the years is that Microsoft and/or SCO moles have infiltrated the GNOME leadership in a covert effort to destroy any possibility that Linux could compete with Windows on the desktop. I could not agree more. Choice is disappearing, like having the option of a large virtual desktop (an oversized workspace) with edge flipping. Those of us used to such niceties for over a decade find them amazingly productive features. Hell, even an oversized workspace that allowed keyboard navigation would be a nice option. Wouldn't want to confuse the poor user with such advanced features. Havoc Pennington is a bright enough fellow, but I think he's got issues.
Metacity gets surprisingly few people helping out with anything useful, it's really depressing to go through bugs and see so many more people whining for buggy bloat than fixing real issues. I should let people add crack in exchange for fixing bugs. "Fix 30 good bugs and you can add the raise-on-click pref." "Fix 50 and you can add edge flipping." No wonder his WM get so little developer support. There is little there to inspire the developer to help with. The switch to Metacity by GNOME and the response to users about the edge flipping issue has been one of the more depressing episodes for me as a Linux user.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 17:01 UTC (Mon) by newren (subscriber, #5160) [Link] even an oversized workspace that allowed keyboard navigation would be a nice option. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are referring to, Metacity has that and has had it for a long time. I use it all the time. Fix 30 good bugs and you can add the raise-on-click pref. Havoc said that? That's funny, I was pretty sure I saw him say a dozen in one bug report. Can you tell me when and where your quote appeared so that I can determine whether the number is going up or down? :-) he switch to Metacity by GNOME and the response to users about the edge flipping issue has been one of the more depressing episodes for me as a Linux user. Why? GNOME does not hardcode for Metacity at all, and in looking through the code, it is quite apparent that the mean for the window manager to be easily interchangeable and replaceable. If you don't like Metacity, why not just use Sawfish or another window manager? Also, to follow up to that, I think there's more to the story. I think few hack on Metacity because most don't feel like there's any need to. It works, so why change it? Sure, there may be those use to the more esoteric features found in various other window managers on *nix (personally, I'm one of those that likes do-not-raise-on-click in mouse focus), but since Metacity's codebase is so easy to work with and is so well written, there are a lot of patches out there that people can easily grab. It's also pretty easy to write your own (I know, because even I can do it).
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 18:02 UTC (Mon) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link] If you don't like Metacity, why not just use Sawfish or another window manager?I love Sawfish, but it is so unmaintained that it is in grievous danger of becoming irrelevant. For example it is one of the few remaining GNOME components that is not UTF-8 aware. Already in Fedora 2 test 3 the sawfish package does not work at all, and there is so little developer interest in sawfish that I see no reason to hope for improvement. In what must be the height of irony, the best GNOME compliant window manager included in Fedora (and the one that I now use) is kwin from the KDE team. since Metacity's codebase is so easy to work with and is so well written, there are a lot of patches out there that people can easily grab. Two patches that I am specifically looking for are the following:
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 19:18 UTC (Mon) by newren (subscriber, #5160) [Link] I love Sawfish, but it is so unmaintained that it is in grievous danger of becoming irrelevant. True. John Harper, IIRC (which I likely may not), got hired by Apple and then was unable to work on Sawfish (noncompete clauses or something like that. Since sawfish contains every possible configuration known to man, it's extremely complex which serves as a significant barrier to more people working on it. Combine that with the fact that it's written in LISP, and you've cut down the number of people who can contribute even further. *shrug* I would like to bind alt-rightclick to the raise-or-lower-window keyboard shortcut... There may be patches that do this or similar; I don't know because I haven't checked. But it sounds simple enough. And yes, it would definitely require a patch as the Alt+any-mouse-click actions are all hardcoded (on purpose). I would like to have the ability to move a window so that its titlebar is above the top edge of the monitor. Me too. The maintainers would never accept it, and I agree with them for not accepting it given their rationale and their design goals for Metacity. This feature really doesn't fit. However, that doesn't mean it is unfit for other window managers... I am aware of at least two patches to handle this. One was a hack (even the person who submitted it said so). It's a couple years old, I think. The other was fairly recent and looked more clean, though I didn't get a chance to test to see how well it worked. Don't remember the bug number off the top off my head for either one, though.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 9:03 UTC (Tue) by cjdewey (guest, #5128) [Link] The maintainers would never accept it, and I agree with them for not accepting it given their rationale and their design goals for Metacity. This feature really doesn't fit.Can you expand on this, or provide a link? Why would they allow windows to go off the left, right and bottom edges of the screen, but not the top? When I need to open an oversize window (bigger than my desktop), it's so much easier to drag the window around with ALT-LEFTCLICK to see the contents, than it is to manipulate two scrollbars.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 16:08 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Why would they allow windows to go off the left, right and bottom edges of the screen, but not the top?Because most users move windows by dragging the titlebar on top, and if the titlebar disappears from view, they won't know what to do to move the window again? (Especially as "what to do" tends to change from one window manager to another?)
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 17:24 UTC (Tue) by cjdewey (guest, #5128) [Link] Because most users move windows by dragging the titlebar on top, and if the titlebar disappears from view, they won't know what to do to move the window again? (Especially as "what to do" tends to change from one window manager to another?)If they only drag things around by the titlebar, they -can't- move the window past the top edge of the display. WindowMaker has this right, I think: there's some resistance "pressure" before a window can be moved beyond the top edge, so you need a "running start" at it. More than enough to protect most users from inadvertently confusing themselves by moving the titlebar out of view.
Alt-{left,right}click Posted May 13, 2004 9:55 UTC (Thu) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [Link] I am a WindowMaker diehard fan. In the very beginning, I used to move the windows using the titlebar, and resize it using the bottom bar. I just don't do that anymore. Alt-leftclick moves a window, using any point of the said window as the handle. Alt-rightclick resizes it, pulling or pushing the closest window edge. You simply cannot push a window beyond reach, you can always do as you wish with it... Most window managers implement this behavior, I am amazed that Gnome (or Metacity?) people just removed it. Why? Even if most users will never use it, people who _do_ use it will really get annoyed to find it gone (it has happened to me in Windows).
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 21:42 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] In what must be the height of irony, the best GNOME compliant window manager included in Fedora (and the one that I now use) is kwin from the KDE team. Tried WindowMaker?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 23:32 UTC (Mon) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] Tried WindowMaker?Yup. I live in Window Maker. Gnome 2.6 in Fedora Core 2 (test) doesn't really play nice with it, though. Oh well; goodbye, Gnome.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 4:45 UTC (Tue) by mbanck (subscriber, #9035) [Link] Metacity is completely unusable to me until these two problems are fixed.Well, perhaps it is time for WOM (Working Overloaded Metacity)? Just collect the patches from bugzilla, build a version, distribute it and see whether people like/use it. That's what the source is there for. If your project has gained enough popularity, maybe distributions will start to ship it as the Metacity. And even if not, you've scratched your (and probably quite a few others, from what I've read) itch. Personally, I don't have issues with Metacity, but then, I only switch to Gnome every once in a while. Michael
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 8:56 UTC (Tue) by cjdewey (guest, #5128) [Link] <i>I would like to have the ability to move a window so that its titlebar is above the top edge of the monitor. That is, alt-leftclick followed by an upward mouse motion should not block when the titlebar hits the top edge of the screen.</i>Bingo. That, even more than spatial Nautilus, is my biggest peeve with GNOME right now.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 23:49 UTC (Mon) by rriggs (subscriber, #11598) [Link] If you are feeling lucky, google for 'havoc "let people add crack"'...
even an oversized workspace that allowed keyboard navigation would be a nice option.I think you are. What Metacity provides is multiple workspaces. We've had that feature since the dawn of CDE. A single large desktop is a lot more intuitive for many of us. It is certainly more flexible.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 9:58 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] GNOME does not hardcode for Metacity at all, and in looking through the code, it is quite apparent that the mean for the window manager to be easily interchangeable and replaceable.Well, it used to be easy, back in the GNOME 1.x days when there was a window manager option in preferences. I haven't tried 2.6 yet, but in 2.0/2.2/2.4 one has to first set the current window manager process to "normal" so that it doesn't respawn, kill it, and then start the new window manager from an xterm (don't forget to use 'nohup') or by pressing F2 for the "run program" dialog. Hardly what I would call easy, especially considering GNOME's target userbase. Although the window manager can be changed, it's fairly apparent that they really don't want that, and they go out of their way to make it difficult. If they didn't, then why was the window manager option removed from preferences?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 13, 2004 18:08 UTC (Thu) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] It's not Metacity's fault that other window managers aren't as standards compliant and don't provide --replace, e.g.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 17:11 UTC (Mon) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] What is it with you people who spend all your time tweaking your desktop look? Haven't you got anything better to do?I've been using computers for over 20 years now, and have *never* felt the desire to do this. I've got more important things to do. My parents have had a PC for 10 years now (win98). They have never downloaded a custom skin for their windows desktop. Nor have the half-dozen of their friends who I occasionally help out with computer problems. I have 20 work colleagues running windows, and not one of them has customized their desktops either. Not because corporate security prevents it, but because they have *work* to do. Setting desktop font & icon sizes: important (eyesight and screen quality varies).
I *know* they won't be complaining about the lack of a feature to change individual colours in their desktop theme! Oh, and for you tweakers: you are perfectly entitled to install Sawfish or any other alternative window manager and tweak away. Freedom! PS: I believe the article is wrong about having to edit the "registry" to make navigational mode the default. Other reviews have indicated there is a reasonably accessable option to select which you want.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 18:39 UTC (Mon) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Simon, I second your thoughts. (I do add one correction though: it is necessary to use the configuration editor to change the navigational method, if desired--there is no radio button or checkbox in the GUI interface to change it as easily.)In addition, I'll state my preference: I like Gnome 2.6. Nick simply doesn't know what he's talking about when he says Gnome keeps getting worse: its stability has been improved by light years from 1.4 through 2.0/2.2/2.4 and now 2.6. I switched to Gnome from KDE at Gnome 2.4 because I liked the way things worked. And now that the navigational method has changed, I like it even more. I have never liked the browser method, and the spatial method seems very natural to me and a number of people I work and correspond with. I set my theme to one that I like, and then I probably won't worry about it until Gnome 2.8 comes out (or later). So... for all of you that think that the Gnome developers have gone nuts, be assured that there are a significant number of us out there that agree with them quite nicely. But the thing that really makes me like Gnome (and, in particular, v2.6) is the Gnome developers' emphasis on sticking to a set of user interface guidelines that they've established. This is absolutely wonderful. Back in the early Mac days there was a whole volume of the Inside Macintosh developer guides dedicated solely to the user interface guidelines and how things should look, and WHY they should look that way. A small team of people sat down, looked at psych studies and their own user testing, and came up with an amazingly good set of guidelines that made the Mac interface the best there was. (Whether it still is, is a valid matter of debate, but I digress...) Gnome 2.6 is the first free software interface that comes close to that level of consistency to UI guidelines, and their set of guidelines is almost as well-constructed. So...good work chaps. Keep it up and don't let whiners like Nick distract you from 2.8.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 21, 2004 12:33 UTC (Fri) by nobrowser (guest, #21196) [Link] > Setting desktop font & icon sizes: important (eyesight and screen quality varies). Setting a desktop background: optional but nice. Selecting a theme: optional, but some people like it. Tweaking individual colours: a waste of timeSimon forgets the most important aspect: keyboard bindings. Hand size (and number of usable fingers, alas) also varies :-) Also, I actually know a colorblind user, is tweaking individual > A small team of people sat down, looked at psych studies and their own user testing, and came up with an amazingly good set of guidelines that made the Mac interface the best there was. Psych studies, eh? Makes me feel roughly the same as when a newspaper tells me I am "out of mainstream" because I won't vote for one of 2 candidates who together command 95% of the electorate (which in turn is caused, in a small part, by that action of the newspaper). Freedom or unfreedom is not a binary yes/no variable. If you make
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 19:59 UTC (Mon) by corey_s (guest, #12510) [Link] What is it with you people who seem to think that "tweaking" one's desktop environment in order to better suit one's specific preferences and work habits is somehow a waste of time, that detracts from real work? What an absurd and preposterous assertion! As if spending a few minutes or more ( longer when confronted with a brand new environment that you're not familiar with yet ) configuring settings somehow becomes, "spending all your time"... As if configuring your computer's parameters that you _WORK_ in EVERYDAY, is somehow not time wisely spent. As if, for those other people who _do_ actualy enjoy "spending all their time tweaking", for whatever reasons they may have, that they are somehow second class citizens worthy of scorn in comparison to you people who apparently have "more important things to do". You mention "Freedom!", and yet you disparage and belittle it with your words. Even worse, however, you show a distinct lack of insight and regard for the fact that adjusting one's computing environment is there to enhance productivity and efficiency. I prefer to work smarter, not harder. But if you feel otherwise for yourself, that's your prerogative - but please don't be foolish concerning others' perfectly legitimate and valid preferences. I don't have issue with the fact that you Let's see how much sense your reasoning makes when applied within a slightly different context: "What is it with you people who spend all your time adjusting your mirrors, seat and steering position in your cars before you drive?"
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 20:46 UTC (Mon) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] Ahh...the smell of napalm in the morning :-)What I think is amusing is those people who say that because they can't set the colour of the titlebar on a window, the Gnome desktop isn't worth using. Things like setting icon sizes, font sizes, panel at top/bottom/side, number of virtual workspaces: yes, those are all worth setting and can make users more productive. And all of these are settable in Gnome. If that's what you mean by "adjusting the car" then I agree with you. However every feature that is present in a software application is a potential bug. It also increases the complexity of learning the system; more options in the control panels, more pages in the user manual; more code inter-dependencies, larger disk and ram footprint. By continually asking: "is function X really useful", a simpler and more reliable system can be built. And by ensuring that there are clean inter-component interfaces, people who prefer flexibility over simplicity and stability can take out a component and replace it with an alternative, eg swapping out Metacity for Sawfish. I don't have "scorn" for the "tweakers". I just don't think that their desire for features should be allowed to change the experience that the majority of people have when they use gnome. Think of Gnome as gedit vs vi or emacs. It's not due to "scorn" of vi or emacs that they are not the default text editor in gnome. Nor is it due to "scorn" that gedit doesn't include a lisp interpreter so it can offer an emacs mode; it is because that would bloat and destabilise gedit for the benefit of only a few people. Those who want emacs can install emacs. Those who want fancy desktops can install alternative window managers. Or people can download the source to any of Gnome and patch it themselves. Now *that* is Freedom. It may not be the freedom to insist that other people provide what you want, but it's a sort of freedom I'm happy with.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 8:04 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] You've never had to deal with dyslexics or people with eyesight difficulties; while people with mild problems don't need to set colours, I have met people who cannot read any text that isn't yellow on red, or blue on yellow. Unless GNOME's defaults are all text yellow on red backgrounds or blue on yellow backgrounds (including titlebar text), it needs to be easy for them to reconfigure, otherwise they can't read the titlebar.Granted, these people aren't common. But it does show that you must not assume that everyone who wants to play with colour schemes is doing so because they just want to have fun; some of them need these funky colour schemes in order to make the desktop usable. And on a different note, quite a few people feel that customising their desktop (wallpaper, colours, icon themes) makes the computer "theirs". Because they gain this attachment to their system, they are happier working at it; it's the difference between your study at home, and a cubicle in an office.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 13, 2004 4:43 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] What is perhaps more common is the situation I'm in; I can read text OK regardless of background colour, but if it's not light-on-dark I soon get a blinding headache.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 14, 2004 2:33 UTC (Fri) by mbp (guest, #2737) [Link] Well, GNOME supports the common case of wanting all white-on-black and black-on-white reasonably well. For the rest, I guess they can download it from red-on-yellow-text.org. Or, you know, file an RFE pointing out the condition and it can get in the default distribution.I think these people may well be better off with GNOME's "make it red-on-yellow" rather than needing to set everything by hand. (Though how they are going to get it installed if they *cannot* read the default text *at all* is another question. Presumably a person able to read black-on-white needs to configure it for them, regardless of system.)
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 12:43 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] There are many aspects of your working environment which affect yourmood, productivity, and how quickly you fatique. I'm not only talking about your GUI desktop but the command line. People make aliases, setup command line completion, prompt format, etc. because it is worth their time to do so. If the environment ships in a state that works well for them that is great, but the lack of flexibility is a limiting factor. I absolutely hate it when I have to use Windows at work. I don't like Furthermore having the ability to configure your desktop is not a liability The only point I'll concede is that the lack of customization does not
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 0:30 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] There are generally two types of problems that cause a preference to be added to an application:
Quite often, people will ask developers to add preferences when they run into the first type of problem. However, this can lead to huge numbers of preferences, which makes testing a lot more difficult. Take a look at the number of preferences in Mozilla for an example of this ... The policy Gnome has been using is that if the default behaviour is broken then it should be fixed, rather than adding a preference that allows users to unbreak the app. For the second class of problems Gnome is more likely to add a preference, provided that user experience benefit isn't outweighed by the additional maintenance burden. So when you are tweaking preferences in your desktop environment, you should ask yourself if it is because the default setup is broken, or because your needs differ from those of the audience the defaults are targetted at.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 2:17 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] It must be nice to be so busy with work that you cannot find time to honeyour tools, but frankly, if I'm going to spend the greater part of my waking life working with a single tool and looking at a single screen, then I want to have it just right for me. And occasionally I like a change of scenery, too... It has little to do with obsessive tweaking, more with having a pleasant and comfortable environment to work in.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 17:18 UTC (Mon) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] While I too don't like the road the Gnome has gone down, I think peopleare being unfair about 2.6's "spatial" file manager. The fact that Apple dropped that metaphor for MacOS X is only a symptom of their shift to the NeXT user interface, not some judgement of the spatial metaphor. Microsoft's switch was nothing but a gimmick to show that they embraced the web, after ignoring it for so long. Criticisms of the spatial file manager tend to come exclusively from people unaccustomed to it, and are akin to a Windows user rejecting Linux because Linux is just too different. Petreley's article dwells way too much on this one aspect of Gnome 2.6, considering it an unarguably bad thing, and barely touches the bigger picture. Again, I'm no Gnome apologist. I'm a KDE user who started with tvtwm, used Gnome 1.2 for a while, then switched to KDE after Qt went GPL and Gnome bugs annoyed me too much. I'm appalled by the way Gtk2 has ruined Gtk-based apps (and the way colors can no longer be set separately from themes), and I actually like being able to configure things.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 20:10 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] > Criticisms of the spatial file manager tend to come exclusively frompeople unaccustomed to it, and are akin to a Windows user rejecting Linux because Linux is just too different. I take issue with the above claim. I have been running fedora rawhide for months and I can say without any reservation that spatial is virtually unusable. I tried to like it. I *really* tried to like it. But there is just nothing about it to like. I have always heartily approved of the way that Gnome 2.x has been simplified and streamlined. But spatial nautilus ties the users hands behind his back, blindfolds him, and spins him around. It's just insane.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 21:11 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link] Do note that Fedora only very recently got the completed Nautilus with completed spatial mode. If you are basing your opinion on code that was in there months ago, you are basing your opinion on half-finished work.I've found spatial nautilus to be a complete pleasure. Faster, simpler, cleaner, and easier. And that's coming from someone who lives in a shell prompt most of the time and develops a lot of web (navigational) software. Advanced user if ever there was one, and yet I do indeed prefer spatial. Same as the GNOME developers that implemented spatial mode. So far as Windows/OS X, neither are good indicators of user preference of spatial vs navigational. Most OS X users I've spoken too prefer the old spatial finder over the OS X navigational finder. And Windows was _never_ spatial at all; spatial means a hell of a lot more than just "opens folder in new window," which is the only similarity spatial nautilus has to old Windows file manager. If you don't like spatial, use browser mode. If you don't like Nautilus, use Velocity. If you don't like GNOME, quit wasting your time bitching and just use something else. I find GNOME to be the best desktop around, and so do quite a few other users. If it's not to your taste, fine. Nobody is forcing you to use it.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 9:56 UTC (Tue) by Prototerm (guest, #20227) [Link] If you don't like GNOME, quit wasting your time bitching and just use something else.It's so nice when two people have a polite conversation, listening to what the other has to say, without resorting to name-calling and the like. After all, to do otherwise would be so...Slashdot...wouldn't it? And while the above quote makes a good point, let's remember that distros like Red Hat are designed to work best with Gnome, and that tools like Ximian's desktop require it. The user may feel they don't have a choice in using Gnome for their particular situation. Second, they may actually love Gnome, except for that one feature that drives them crazy.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 6:56 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] > I have been running fedora rawhide for months and I can say without any reservation that spatial is virtually unusable. I tried to like it. I *really* tried to like it. But there is just nothing about it to like.Fair, enough, but as I've pointed out before there are people who prefer the spatial browsing. All my users here complained when given the gnome 2.4 browser because 'everything keeps appearing in the same window - I can't find anything', and were very happy when I switched it to spatial browsing. For them the 2.6 default is 'correct'. And petreley is wrong when he says no mature OS uses it - RISC OS does - that's a 20-year old OS these days and it has always worked this way and still does. It's not very popular these days, especially outside the UK and Germany, due to not being available for x86 hardware, but it's users are very happy with the UI, and always have been. Personally I use MC for file navigation, even on the gnome desktop.
colours Posted May 11, 2004 0:54 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] I'm appalled by the way Gtk2 has ruined Gtk-based apps (and the way colors can no longer be set separately from themes), and I actually like being able to configure things. Could you ellaborate on this? GTK 2 doesn't really impose much more policy than GTK 1.2 with respect to colours. An app can still load additional rc files, or set the colours on an individual widget (which is actually easier to do now, using gtk_widget_modify_fg and gtk_widget_modify_bg). It is true that most GTK2 apps don't provide as many preferences to customise random colours in the UI, but this isn't due to limitations in GTK. When you change the foreground or background of a widget, you will often make the text unreadable for at least one theme. Often, it will break with one of the accessibility themes (eg. high contrast inverse). Even if you set both the background and foreground, you may end up making the text unreadable for some users, since they may have special requirements (eg. some people can't read text that has high contrast with its background). By following using the default colours and fonts, you avoid all these problems. Not only does the app fit in better with the desktop, but it is also more likely to work out of the box for people with disabilities. You will find that the W3C makes similar recommendations to website designers.
colours Posted May 11, 2004 11:28 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Could you ellaborate on this? GTK 2 doesn't really impose much more policy than GTK 1.2 with respect to colours. Well, I first noticed this while using KDE and running Gtk apps. KDE has color themes separate from widget themes, and can extend the color theme to non-KDE apps. With traditional Xt programs, it sets X resources to do this. With Gtk 1.x programs, it uses .gtkrc to do this. With Gtk 2.x programs, it can't, because Gtk 2.x combines the colors with the themes. That means if I pick a theme whose widgets fit with the rest of my desktop, its colors might totally clash. If I pick a theme whose colors fit, the widgets might look totally wrong.
It is true that most GTK2 apps don't provide as many preferences to customise random colours in the UI, but this isn't due to limitations in GTK. When you change the foreground or background of a widget, you will often make the text unreadable for at least one theme. See, this is one thing that Petreley got right. WHY NOT TRUST USERS TO SET THEIR OWN COLORS?! The user can see for herself whether it's unreadable or not! Anyway, if you set colors completely separate from themes, then you WON'T make anything "unreadable for at least one theme", because themes aren't setting colors anymore.
Not only does the app fit in better with the desktop, Remember, at this point we're talking about Gtk2, NOT Gnome as a whole. That means the toolkit has NO IDEA what the rest of the desktop looks like. The user could be running any window manager or desktop environment -- fvwm, icewm, windowmaker, XFCE, KDE. If I want to theme my Gtk apps so their general look fits in better with MY desktop, I also want to be able to control the colors for the same reason. If it were Gnome libraries putting on these restrictions, I wouldn't mind, but Gnome isn't the only user of Gtk.
but it is also more likely to work out of the box for people with disabilities. I'm not talking about out of the box. I'm talking about the user being able to change what comes out of the box for their own purposes.
You will find that the W3C makes similar recommendations to website designers. The W3C recommends that whatever web designers do, users be able to override color and font settings. Users are supposed to have the final say.
colours Posted May 11, 2004 19:23 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] Well, I first noticed this while using KDE and running Gtk apps. KDE has color themes separate from widget themes, and can extend the color theme to non-KDE apps. With traditional Xt programs, it sets X resources to do this. With Gtk 1.x programs, it uses .gtkrc to do this. With Gtk 2.x programs, it can't, because Gtk 2.x combines the colors with the themes. Have you considered that this might be a bug in KDE's colour theme control panel? Both GTK 1.2 and 2.x mix colour settings and theme settings in the gtkrc file, so there is no reason why it couldn't work. See, this is one thing that Petreley got right. WHY NOT TRUST USERS TO SET THEIR OWN COLORS?! The user can see for herself whether it's unreadable or not! I think I misunderstodd your previous post. I have nothing against users customising the colours of their UI (it is one of the things that still needs to be implemented for Gnome). Back in the 1.x days, many apps used non-theme colours for various bits of their user interface. Usually they would have a section of their preferences where the user could change these colours. However, if the user had chosen a different theme (such as one of the accessibility themes), these bits of the UI might intially be invisible. The user might not even realise that they were missing out on something until they looked at the preferences. This is bad, and should be avoided. The right way to allow the user to customise the colours is to create a new theme. Since most Gnome apps don't override the theme colours anymore, the entire desktop would take on the new colour scheme put together by the user. This is a much better situation than the old days where they would then have to play with the colour settings in many applications after changing the theme in order to get a usable desktop.
colours Posted May 12, 2004 11:00 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Have you considered that this might be a bug in KDE's colour theme control panel? Well, first it broke when Gtk changed, not when KDE changed, and second non-KDE users are complaining about not being able to change Gnome colors. That tells me it's not a problem with KDE.
Back in the 1.x days, many apps used non-theme colours for various bits of their user interface. Usually they would have a section of their preferences where the user could change these colours. I think we can agree that sticking color preferences inside apps is a bad thing.
The right way to allow the user to customise the colours is to create a new theme. That's horrible! Why should someone have to go to that much effort just because they like the look of an existing theme except for its colors?
colours Posted May 12, 2004 11:24 UTC (Wed) by sri (guest, #2077) [Link] >That's horrible! Why should someone have to go to that much effort just >because they like the look of an existing theme except for its colors?A new theme is automatically created as soon as you change a parameter in the theme you're using. There is no extra work. The new theme doesn't even require a name. sri
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 18:00 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link] I believe the problem isn't that Gnome is weird (which it is, the spatialNautilus being the most prominent example), it's that people call it a "desktop" when it isn't. Seriously, how many Gnome apps does a Gnome "desktop" consist of? Mozilla, uh-huh. Open Office, nope. Evolution, hardly. What's left? Gaim? Gimp? If you want a "desktop" as in the applications actually dock into each other, use common components, such as the same addressbook, etc. there is only KDE. This, on the other hand, includes everything from a web browser, mail, media player -- all following design standards and using the common components. What's missing so far is mostly good imaging software like Gimp, otherwise it's mostly there (there are some basic Open Office integration going on too). Don't get me wrong here. There's nothing wrong with Gnome. It just isn't a "desktop" in the integrated sense.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 19:09 UTC (Mon) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link] You obviously have no idea of what your talking about. GNOME components can dock and open documents in other applications, and have had that capability since 1.4 was released about three years ago (when for example AbiWord could open email attachments inline right in the Evolution window). As for "Web browser, mail, media player..." when was the last time you used GNOME, five years ago?Yes, there are a couple of areas where KDE is more advanced than GNOME. For example, Anjuta is just now starting to catch up to KDevelop. On the other hand, Glade had a loadable graphically-editable XML user interface definition long before it came to KDE (which in turn is of course years ahead of Windows, but that's another matter), and GStreamer and its derivative applications are so much farther advanced than anything in KDE, there's just no point in comparing. Please either tell us about some real KDE innovations missing in GNOME, or else don't make yourself look so bad by pretending to know something when you don't have a clue.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 7:53 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link] When I read that post again, it came out all wrong. I'm sorry, I didn'tmean to bash any software in particular. My point is that these reviews are of the "install and review" type. What the desktop looks like isn't terribly important, it's what you as an end user can do with it that is. If you want to demonstrate the capabilities of a desktop, I think you may have better luck with a complete desktop. The problem with Gnome/Evolution isn't at all technical in nature -- it's that the calendar isn't the "Gnome" calendar and the addressbook isn't the "Gnome" addressbook, you don't save passwords in all programs with a common UI etc. (I prefer not to use the word "innovation" as it isn't. The end user want something that works, not something thats "new".)
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 19:14 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] GAIM, GIMP, Evolution (clearly a GNOME application, nothing "hardly" about it), AbiWord, Galeon, GNOME Terminal, many applets, Rhythmbox, Dia, Pan, Sound Juicer, Totem, LogJam, are all my applications of choice.I think that covers anything I do except code, for which I use Emacs. Nothing in KDE or GNOME holds a candle to that yet.
Foo Posted May 10, 2004 20:43 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] I'm an old school curmudgeon.I used to use Gnome, but after some upgrade that reduced the configurability I threw up my hands and went back to FVWM. I'm much happier. FVWM is far more "geek-friendly" than Gnome is, in my opinion. I like to have a window manager that I can convigure using a text file, if I so desire. I don't like having to dig through a big and complicated GUI to configure it-- but I *do* want it to be highly configurable. Not because I need all the huge number of options, but because the small number of options I *do* need are unlikely to be the ones chosen by somebody else. I like having a small number of flat-file configuration files that I can copy or back up. I used to have the problem with GNome that sometimes things would get screwed up, and I'd have no idea which configuration file(s) had gotten a bad thing in them to make things break. More than once I moved *all* my "dot" files to a subdirectory and started over, becuase the gigantic Gnome configuarion scheme was just opaque to me. I like being able to log into multiple machines that share the same accounts *at the same time* and home directory without gnome bithcing at me that its configuration can't handle that without some special networking magic from a desktop environment's overburdensome configuration manager. I like the simplicity that FVWM gives me. Yet it also allows me to have desktop shortcuts and a little taskbar thingy. Everything beyond that is the applications. -Rob
Foo Posted May 11, 2004 1:50 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] I second all this. FVWM has been my WM of choice for over a decade. I started with twm, then switched to olvwm ("v" for virtual was what'd hooked me on), then discovered Motif which, as the interface, I immediately prefered over the OL look&feel, but there was no "v" in mwm, and finally, came over fvwm. That was it. Fully customizable, fast, ten times lighter than anything else (well, except twm), a lot of options and power.As KDE and then Gnome started appearing I gave them occasionally a short try but always returned to fvwm. Last time (a year ago) the HD in my home computer decided nothing would distract it from doing "click-click" for the rest of its life, I installed a fresh version of MDK on the replacement only to find out they dropped fvwm from their distribution. Of course, I compiled it from the sources, but missed the nice intergration feature of MDK syncronizing menus of all windowmanagers. So I decided it was time to investigate the "contemporary" alternatives in more depth. I spent literally _hours_ trying to configure either of the beasts to mimicre my years-old configuration of fvwm. All in vain. The only thing each one excelled at was to drive me nuts completely. So I ended up digging out the syncro fvwm menu thingy from an old release of MDK and ported it to the current version. I'm happy and productive back since then. And, BTW, has anyone of the Gnome or KDE developers tried to imagine such a perverted thing as heterogenous environment? Like two computers (e.g. RH and MDK) sharing $HOME for users? It's nothing but a complete disaster. A carefully adjusted on one box desktop loads completely ugly on the other (if it loads at all). And, if not careful to disable the "save desktop on exit" [mis]feature, will ruine the first box as well, leaving the user as the only option to "rm -rf ~/.kde". Same often holds true for upgrading to a newer version of KDE/Gnome for the same distro. In contrast, the only time I was forced to edit my .fvwmrc (fully documented, as opposite to KDE/Gnome configs) was the switch from 1.* to 2.* many years ago, and yet there was a convert script which did 95% of the task automatically.
Bar Posted May 11, 2004 10:15 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] I used to use Gnome, but after some upgrade that reduced the configurability I threw up my hands and went back to FVWM.Could you please post a link to your fvwm2rc file? I'd like to try FVWM again, but the default configuration is so weird that it takes me hours to get close to where I want to be. I've often thought that the FVWM project could increase the size of their userbase significantly if they had a more "normal" default configuration. It's sort of sad, but my current "desktop" is worse than it was in Oct. 1998 when I was running KDE 1.0. I'm currently running Icewm. I don't really like it, it just sucks less than anything else that I've tried. A sufficiently tweaked FVWM configuration might be better.
Bar Posted May 21, 2004 15:22 UTC (Fri) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link] Could you please post a link to your fvwm2rc file? I'd like to try FVWM again, but the default configuration is so weird that it takes me hours to get close to where I want to be. I've often thought that the FVWM project could increase the size of their userbase significantly if they had a more "normal" default configuration.This isn't his, but you're welcome to play with it anyway:
fvwm2rc.20031230.fvwm2-20010603 Caveats: as the name suggests, it works with a three-year-old version (I think either 2.2.4 or 2.2.5); newer versions have merged the IconPath and PixmapPath variables into ImagePath. I believe that was the only change I had to make, but I didn't have time to check my newer machine this morning. Btw, here's what the FvwmButtons section looks like (with an extra digital xclock placed nearby):
fvwm2rc.20031230.sshot.png Note that newer versions of xclock appear to be broken, at least for my purposes--they don't maintain a 1:1 aspect ratio for analog modes (elliptical clocks don't really do much for me), and I believe the color options don't work. Greg
Foo Posted May 11, 2004 14:02 UTC (Tue) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link] I used FVWM until FVWM2 came out, I was very unhappy with the default version and tried GNOME and KDE,hated the performance problems with them and ended up settling on windowmaker as a nice, fast manager that doesn't get in my way. I will admit that I haven't done much with the config files for it, but mostly becouse I haven't needed to.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 10, 2004 21:44 UTC (Mon) by pksings (guest, #93) [Link] I used to really love Gnome, I especially liked it with Enlightenment.When the ability to use different backgrounds on the different desktops was removed I abandoned it and switched to KDE. The ability to configure it (fine-tune it) seemingly has gotten less and less so as each revision has come out. I personally find that the lack of the ability to tell what desktop you are on by the different backgrounds is un-excusable. CDE can even do it. I can only believe that this feature was removed to "dumb it down" for Windoze and ex-windoze users. I even asked about it in the newsgroups and was told to just use a differnt WM. So I did. Kwin. I'm with Petreley, you Gnome guys can kiss grits. PK
Non Technical Point of View Posted May 11, 2004 0:11 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link] Lot of people here seem to view the problem from a rather technical point of view. I havn't seen the Gnome Desktop yet, but maybe it can be easier to use for some people. Let me tell you a few things about what some real users want to do with their computers in real life :- People just want access to their data - People want to be able to open anything they receive, mail, document simply by one click on it - People do not care about sorting their data, they just want to reach them, and have them easily accessible (ex autosave attachement from mails directly in an obvious folder on disk) - People do not want hundred of options, they want to know one method to do thing, have it as simple and natural as possible, and above all reliable and that never break - People do not care about the name of their programs, they want "Mail", "Internet", "Chat", "Write" I give you an example now to better illustrate : So full integration is more and more what will happen, and what MS will push to gain MarketShare because people want that. MS with Longhorn is just building the fundations to gain on that field. So what is needed is integration of OpenOffice + Mozilla + Gaim + Gnome to win. I don't know if Gnome 2.6 is solving any of the problem I mention here, but I know that todays system (MS or others) don't solve those problems yet (maybe MAC is ahead). People want their Office suite/ Browser/ Mail be their OS. We can not fight that, so we better find a way to offer it. So to conclude I have no trouble with Gnome offering not much choice and forcing a new paradigm because I know old paradigm is dead, and people do not want options, they want thing to do their will while expressing them in the most minimal possible way. And their will is not to tweak things, it is to be creative. The one to help them there will gain their heart.
Non Technical Point of View Posted May 11, 2004 3:44 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] So because I don't agree with your patronising opinions of what 'people' want I'm to assume you don't consider me a person?Some of what you say is true. It's a good thing for the computer to put as little as possible in the way of the user getting their tasks done, certainly. But much of what you're talking about is just promulgating patronising and insulting assumptions about the users intelligence (saying that a new user may not immediately grasp the difference between a file and a directory is an observation, but implying that they are incapable of understanding the distinction is utter rubbish - even the most computer-illiterate folks I've had to help grasped that one pretty easily when it's explained in simple terms.) And one thing you miss completely - just because someone doesn't want to be distracted by an advanced feature at first doesn't mean they won't see the need for it once they've gotten more used to the basic system. Removing things just because someone who's never seen a computer before might be confused by it doesn't make for a more usable system in the longrun - quite the opposite. The ideal should be a system that starts simple, but reveals complexity as the user needs it, not one that refuses to grow with the users needs and abilities.
Non Technical Point of View Posted May 11, 2004 10:27 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] The ideal should be a system that starts simple, but reveals complexity as the user needs it, not one that refuses to grow with the users needs and abilities.An 'amen' from the choir...
Non Technical Point of View Posted May 11, 2004 13:39 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link] I'm very sorry you think I was insulting you, it is not my goal to insult anyone. I just wanted to say that some people, the completly non-technical ones, don't care about what other more technical people find straightforward.Some people want things in a way that may not appear rational, but we must not disregard them because in their field they can be quite good. To illustrate that I gave some real life examples that I hope will show that people can expect things to be quite different of what we are accustomed to. So you have all my apologies, my goal was and really is to say that standard file paradigm is not more natural than anything else, and that better can be done for some people. I don't know if it is done so in Gnome, but from what I read it may be so, and maybe it will solve problems for some category of people.
Non Technical Point of View Posted May 13, 2004 7:14 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] The best way to provide users with what they really want is to hire a special person to sit in front of their computers for them. Then they will also get a decent speech recognition and synthesis, and also a unique capability to even get a coffee directly to the couch they lay on while directing their computers. They also get a powerful integration, where their computer person can do the entire tasks like answering emails and writing reports without asking any questions, all by itself, as time passes.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 0:22 UTC (Tue) by chaneau (subscriber, #6674) [Link] I'm not in a position to comment on the design decision which took place, nevertheless I have an experience to share, recently all my users (70) switched from using AS400' terminals to PC.I installed Debian Woody with Gnome2.4 (built from sources) KDE3 (from the Debian built of KDE.org) and Enlightenment0.16, I took the time to explain how those worked and asked my users to make a choice. Now rougly 50% uses KDE (mostly people with a Windows background), the rest uses Enlightenment and nobody uses Gnome. When asked why they simply say that Gnome is too complicated; where KDE is perceived as easy to use and Enlightenment as great to do several things at the same time (due to the ability to switch desktop with the mouse and also the virtual desktop). I think this is the major problem with free software, the real needs of the real users are seldom taken into account. For example with OpenOffice.org try to make something like this; a book cover followed by a toc and then on a right page the first chapter with numbering starting at one, this is stupidly difficult. If we want to convert people, I think the developers will have to start to take into account the basics needs of the end-user and yes I know this is a lot less amuzing for them. But building a technically excellent piece of softare nobody will use seems to be a bit pointless. just my 2 ¢ --
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 13, 2004 1:29 UTC (Thu) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] Intriguing..thanks for the interesting post. Real evidence is always more useful than speculation.Did you have any more details on "gnome is too complicated"? I am surprised, and would have expected instead quite different results. It doesn't surprise me that a majority of computer-literate types (like the ones that subscribe to LWN) would use KDE for exactly the reasons seen in postings above: they know what they want, and want a very configurable system. KDE gives that to them, so good for KDE. I would have expected gnome to be a perfect fit for your users, yet it clearly wasn't. I also know that Sun employ people to actually do useability studies, so would have expected the basics to be right. I wonder why your users took against it so much...maybe some specific bug in the release you were using? Or was it something more fundamental?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 0:42 UTC (Tue) by caid (subscriber, #21513) [Link] GNOME isn't limiting my choices, it just reduces the number of choices I have to make before I can start to work. I can change about anything about my desktop but rarely do.I can understand the need to customize the functionality of your work environment in order to gain productivity, but can anybody really list a feature they need for any reason that you cannot get in GNOME?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 1:04 UTC (Tue) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] I can list a lot of them, but I can't really get them in any of the other vaunted "desktop suites" either. I also suspect they're old enough (e.g. Xresources) that most of the people complaining in these threads have never heard of them, or are glad there are easier ways to configure things these days.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 4:14 UTC (Tue) by caid (subscriber, #21513) [Link] A GNOME app that follows the system settings is close enough to the Xresources approach to work for me. If my memory serves me right, Xresources was just a key-value pair listing, much like the gconf (GNOME version of the Windows registry), but without the hierarchical possibilities (pardon my spelling, my swe-eng dict is too far away). So what's lost? The only thing needed to move settings between Xresources and gconf would be a minor script that you could probably work out in an hour or so. If Xresources really mean that much to you, I think the invested time well worth it.I still havn't felt that GNOME has lost any features as compared to older setups, while perhaps a few have been disabled by default (which is not the same thing). I used to bind a commonly used commands to function keys, something I thought lost in Metacity until somebody pointed me to the gconf-tool. It wasn't lost, just not under my nose anymore.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 6:27 UTC (Tue) by rm (guest, #21520) [Link] X resources have one BIG advantage in a networked environment: they can be set by the server, as well as the client. For example, in my current situation, I use three machines regularly -- one's headless, one's got a lowish resolution display, and one has a very high res display. The headless one is where my home directory actually lives, and from where I run most programs. The three most common ones are xterm, emacs, and firefox. They have very different approaches to font management in particular. Emacs and xterm, when they start up, ask the server resource database what font to use, and depending which workstation I'm sitting at at the moment get an appropriate reply. Firefox, on the other hand, looks at its preferences directory and picks a font without regard to my current x-server. Fortunately Firefox makes it easy to change -- a couple key-taps and I'm down to a usable fontsize on the low-res machine -- but it would be nice if I didn't have to do even that much.If there's a way to get non-Xt-based apps to use X resources, or any similar sort of per-server configuration, I'm all ears.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 12:44 UTC (Tue) by raytd (guest, #4823) [Link] If there's a way to get non-Xt-based apps to use X resources, or any similar sort of per-server configuration, I'm all ears. I believe there is work in this area: http://freedesktop.org/Standards/xsettings-spec IMHO, there is still *much* work to be done on GNOME and all it's components, but I think by and large it is progressing in a reasonable fashion. Once the entire platform stabilizes, it will be much easier to write *integrated* applications with *tons* of preferences.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 12, 2004 0:05 UTC (Wed) by rm (guest, #21520) [Link] That is exactly what I was hoping someone would post. Excellent news, I'll have to keep an eye on this spec as it comes into its own.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 9:55 UTC (Tue) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Xresources values could be set in a hierarchy; they also let you set things on a per-host basis, which GConf doesn't let you do.One major problem with Xresources was that changes weren't immediately pushed to the clients, though.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 14:38 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > One major problem with Xresources was that changes weren't immediately> pushed to the clients, though. Not exactly. Any Xt app could be compiled with the Xmu's EDITRES extension (a single line of code added) and then any resource can be modified at run time. Another thing is that there was no easy standard way to do so (only by using the 'editres' utility), but the infrastructure is all in there.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 12, 2004 0:54 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] I am not too familiar with Xt, but being changable at runtime is not the same as pushing data to the clients at runtime, which is, afaict as an end-user, what GConf does. If I change some preference, it changes in every relevant app, instantly.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 12, 2004 1:50 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > being changable at runtime is not the same as pushing data to the clients at runtimeSure, I agree. That's why I wrote that the _infrastructure_ is there. A user-level daemon similar to gconfd could be added requiring no change whatsoever for existing apps to implement the pushing.
Why customizability doesn't encourage wasting time Posted May 11, 2004 2:05 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] Several readers appeared to accept the idea of reducing easy customization features because most users have better things to do than "twiddling the knobs", or at least should not be encouraged to waste time on such distractions.I think it is indeed rare for most sensible people to be customizing the desktop all the time, but it is still very valuable to be able to do so occasionally. One very good reason is easing the use of a new desktop environment (such as a new Gnome or KDE version) to make its interface work more like the environment one has become used to. I'm one of the people who likes getting new directories in new windows (maybe because I used OS/2 and Win95 a lot in the past), but I think it is not objectively a better policy than the other choice (in other words, it's a matter of taste), and both should be easily chooseable. Similarly to other choices like "click to type" vs "focus follows mouse". Allowing control over colors is especially important, both for physiological (color perception varies) and technical reasons (some colors suck on an aged monitor - at one time I was stuck with a monitor that was usable for text only when the text windows were reduced to use green on black, because of poor color alignment). I haven't tried the new Gnome (mostly using KDE nowadays), but if it indeed is less customizable than prior editions, it is definitely going in the wrong direction.
Why customizability doesn't encourage wasting time Posted May 11, 2004 5:50 UTC (Tue) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] I agree - I think it is a cheap argument to say that 'people should have better things to do than playing round with their desktop settings'.If the developers feel a strong need to reduce the number of visible options and features, they shouldn't simply remove things from the code. Instead they should make those things dependent of parameters and turn them off by default. AND provide detailed documentation, so those of us who want or need to can turn them back on. I can't see that it is easier or better to simply delete code that implements useful features.
Why customizability doesn't encourage wasting time Posted May 13, 2004 1:43 UTC (Thu) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] I'm one of the people your comments are referring to :-).And if you look back at that earlier comment, I point out that there is a cost to providing those features. Every feature is a potential bug. It also sucks up developer time, tester time, documentation writer time, disk space, ram. So to me the best solution is to have multiple versions of the component (the window manager in most cases cited here). The basic, stable, simple, well-documented version is released as the base product. Users who want more features can install the more flexible (and potentially more buggy, larger, more difficult to use) version if they want. Voila - problem solved. And if there isn't enough interest in the developer/tester/documenter communities to support the more flexible version, then that's not a reason to complain to/about those developers who work on the base version. So why not install Enlightenment, Sawfish, or one of the other "advanced" window managers? Or get a community together, make some patches to the base Metacity and release Metacity+ for those who want it?
Tired of bloat? Try LWM! Posted May 11, 2004 2:14 UTC (Tue) by dank (guest, #1865) [Link] After tiring of the thirty to sixty secondstartup of gnome and kde when ~ is mounted from a fileserver, I switched LWM (lightweight window manager, http://www.jfc.org.uk/software/lwm.html) and I'm now happy as a clam. X starts up in about two seconds now, and I have all the functionality I need. LWM is the simplest possible window manager that still provides normally functioning window management. Give it a try!
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 2:22 UTC (Tue) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] I know the feeling that is expressed in this article: the feeling that GNOME has become somebody's private pet project, and that we - the users - are of no significance. Why else would one find that useful features disappear without mention or indeed documentation? Like eg. the little position and size indicators that used to be customary in X - an immensely useful little feature that just disappeared. Etc etc etc.What I would like to see is alternative development effort where people's actual wishes are listened to rather than somebody's private ideal of the day. The very first thing should be to put those things back in that have randomly taken away, the next to remove useless misfeatures, and finally to produce proper, thorough documentation - not the stupid picture books that tell you how press a button, but documentation for grown-ups, with information about which paramters and options there are. Do you remember when you used to be able to set all kinds of options with xset? I expect you can still do that, but where is the bloody documentation?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 4:18 UTC (Tue) by caid (subscriber, #21513) [Link] Alright, I don't agree with all design decisions made by the core GNOME team, but then, I have to realize that I'm getting all this stuff for free together with an option to change it myself. Considering how much a Window or MacOS desktop with the same functionality would cost me, I could probably find some hotshot high school coder and pay him/her to patch GNOME for me so that I can get the features I want.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 6:01 UTC (Tue) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] I want to challenge you on two counts here:1. GNOME isn't simply 'somebody's free programs' - it is the official GNU desktop, and I think the developers have an obligation to live up to the two hallmarks of GNU: the very high technical quality, and the idea that this is code that is made for the users, not somebody's proprietary pet project. I don't see GNOME living up to the last one. 2. It is not actually very likely that one can simply pay somebody from high school a few $$ and then have GNOE changed to satify one's needs. I have worked professionally with programming for over 20 years, and I am now the local UNIX guru - I still find GNOME very unapproachable, not least because there isn't a lot of worthwhile documentation, but also because the thing is huge. It would be archaeology with brush and teaspoon to understand this, let alone making changes.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 6:18 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Gnome is the official GNU desktop? I think that would be news to RMS!Gnome is LGPL and, therefore, not "True Free Software" according to the Gospel of RMS. He is on record as preferring KDE, because it is GPL and is built on Qt which is available under the GPL. Cheers,
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 8:05 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link] Bull. Gnome is an official part of the GNU project, and Stallman supports it over KDE. (Not that I'm a big Stallman fan, just a point of fact.) A simple search for 'stallman kde' or 'stallman gnome' will turn up loads of interviews and documents supporting this. I'd like to see you come up with the record you claim he is on.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 11:18 UTC (Tue) by ecureuil (subscriber, #3507) [Link] RMS is pretty neutral between KDE and Gnome and uses none of them. Iwrote a report on the visit of RMS on KDE booth in the Solutions Linux 2003 in Paris http://www.kde-france.org/article.php3?id_article=98
RMS, GNOME, KDE Posted May 11, 2004 12:38 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] In 2000 at least, RMS definitely preferred Gnome. I don't know if that's changed since.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 12:24 UTC (Tue) by caid (subscriber, #21513) [Link] the idea that this is code that is made for the users, not somebody's proprietary pet project. Really? If you asked me, I would have said that GNOME is one of the few projects really driven by a community, not some lone hero or small group of individuals. I have no idea how the Gnome Foundation work in reality, but to me it seems like a far more democratic approach than the basic i-maintain-my-own-app-thank-you-very-much that I've encountered in some FOSS projects. I still find GNOME very unapproachable, not least because there isn't a lot of worthwhile documentation, but also because the thing is huge. It would be archaeology with brush and teaspoon to understand this, let alone making changes I have to agree with you on this one. I used to be a professional coder as well but the sheer size and complexity of the GNOME/GTK/GLIB/whatever libraries has kept me from developing any applications. I wasn't all that serious about the high school coder thing, but on the other hand, who else has the time to sit down and learn this thing?
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 10:54 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] The very first thing should be to put those things back in that have randomly taken away, the next to remove useless misfeatures, [snip]This is harder than it seems. What you may consider to be a "useless feature" may be someone else's "randomly taken away" feature, and vise versa.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 12, 2004 2:41 UTC (Wed) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] 'What you may consider to be a "useless feature" may be someone else's "randomly taken away" feature, and vise versa'Not a problem, really - I was thinking more about new features that only annoy people. The point is that it should be an inclusive process rather than 'now we thow this feature away just because...' It doesn't even have to lead to bloat - modularization is a possible solution, and one that is already employed in GNOME.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 11, 2004 4:11 UTC (Tue) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link] One of the nicest features of Firefox / Mozilla is tabbed web browsing. Beats the "spatial browsing" of opening new windows.So why not do the same for file browsing? Best of both worlds.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 11, 2004 11:55 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] One of the nicest features of Firefox / Mozilla is tabbed web browsing. Beats the "spatial browsing" of opening new windows. Yes, that's definitely a nice feature. For web browsing.
So why not do the same for file browsing? Best of both worlds. Because they're two very different worlds. Your filesystem is not a bunch of web pages, and you do very different things in your filesystem than on the web.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 12, 2004 6:57 UTC (Wed) by ranger (guest, #6415) [Link] Because they're two very different worlds. Your filesystem is not a bunch of web pagesTrust a GNOME user to think of a file manager only accessing one filesystem (or even the filesystems on only one machine);-). and you do very different things in your filesystem than on the web. Well, I use a web browser to keep a number of reference pages open when working on or researching something. When I do work involving the management of files, I often need to be aware of the structure of multiple filesystems on multiple machines. If tabbed browsing made it easier to work with multiple web pages, why should tabbed file management not make it easier to keep track of many filesystems. Well, it does! Use Konqueror. If you use a terminal emulator with multiple tabs (ie to work on multiple machines without having to chain your CTRL-A's to screen), you likely would benefit from using a tabbed file manager with support for fish:// (ie ssh), smb://, etc etc. I used to use GNOME (up to 1.2), but when 1.4 came out, the file management was no better, and KDE's had improved a lot.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 12, 2004 10:54 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Trust a GNOME user to think of a file manager only accessing one filesystem (or even the filesystems on only one machine);-).I'm not a Gnome user, I'm a KDE user. If tabbed browsing made it easier to work with multiple web pages, why should tabbed file management not make it easier to keep track of many filesystems.Ever tried to drag things between tabs? If you use a terminal emulator with multiple tabs (ie to work on multiple machines without having to chain your CTRL-A's to screen), you likely would benefit from using a tabbed file manager with support for fish:// (ie ssh), smb://, etc etc.fish://, smb://, sftp:// and so on are great. Tabs are great for web browsing. But that doesn't mean tabs are great for file management.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 13, 2004 4:27 UTC (Thu) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link] As I mentioned in OSNews.com discussion, there are a couple of features missing from Konqueror tabs.One is support for drag-and-drop file moving between tabs - perhaps by making a tab pop to the top if you hover over it (like Windows program icons in the "Start" toolbar), or at least letting you drag-and-drop into tabs (like Firefox). The second, more tricky, is to allow the same tabbed folder management in "Save As" application dialogues. If you want to look at the metaphors, "tabbed folders" is a much closer metaphor of my desk-side filing cabinet, where I quickly move between folders for different activities.
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 13, 2004 7:05 UTC (Thu) by duck (subscriber, #4444) [Link] [QUOTE]One is support for drag-and-drop file moving between tabs - perhapsby making a tab pop to the top if you hover over it (like Windows program icons in the "Start" toolbar), or at least letting you drag-and-drop into tabs (like Firefox). [/QUOTE] Hello, drag'n'drop between tabs works for me here (SuSE 9.1, KDE 3.2.1...), just keep the pointer above the destination tab, and it will spring to front Cheers
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 12, 2004 6:50 UTC (Wed) by ranger (guest, #6415) [Link] Konqueror supports tabbed "browsing" for any url it can access, so if you start it up in file manager mode, you could already have this feature.IMHO, much better than spatial browing (which reminds me too much of Windows in the hands of people who never learned about Windows Explorer).
Tabbed browsing anyone? Posted May 12, 2004 7:49 UTC (Wed) by petebull (subscriber, #7857) [Link] Try Konqueror. (best with 3.2 or higher)
A bit exaggerated Posted May 11, 2004 6:03 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] I think the reaction in the article is a bit over the top. Although I agree that the default behaviour of Nautilus that opens a new windows every time you want to see a folder is unpractical, it is not representative of GNOME in general. In general, GNOME has been getting better, not worse. A stupid default in Nautius can be changed in the future, if enough people complain to GNOME developers about it. I didn't get the impression that GNOME folk are set on making the system worse. They do, however, have the policy of making it simpler. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't think we need to panic or write articles to the effect of "GNOME folk have no idea what they're doing". It just isn't right.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 6:14 UTC (Tue) by gavino (guest, #16214) [Link] Well since everyone is getting on their soapbox I might jump on mine and give my 2c as well :)I'm looking forward to spacial gnome. When I'm on the phone and taking notes I used to take notes sequentially on ruled note paper. Even though this was structured I found it unintuitive. When I ran out of pages in my notebook I reached for the photocopier and grabbed some blank pages out of it. I thought this will work OK but not great, and will get me by until I go to the stationary shop and buy more lined notepaper. Well I was amazed at how much better it is. I'm not constrained by the lines. I remember things by where they are on the page. If things are semi-important I write them at the bottom of the page. For important things I write them at the top and draw a cloud around them, maybe drawing a picture and using a different pen color (red for instance). I know this doesn't translate directly into 'spacial is better' because browsing files is a lot different from taking notes, but I'm willing to believe that my brain favors an interface with spacial cues. It would be good if they included a control panel where people could chose the old style, because not everyone is spacially-oriented like me. The only problem I can see is if you are digging down a long directory path - all those intermediate windows that perform a catergorisation function would be annoying (ie directories that hold other directories). Perhaps there should be a modifier key so that say holding left-shift makes it open in the same folder (or middle-mouse click or something). Ok that's probably 4 cents. keep the change.
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld) Posted May 11, 2004 7:59 UTC (Tue) by kakareka (subscriber, #5204) [Link] This is the best explanation I've seen of why spatial is supposedly more intuitive. Personally, I can't see the difference between spatial and "open folder in new window", but I've only been using it a week or so. At least now, I think I finally understand why other people like this mode.
"Open Folder In New Window" Posted May 11, 2004 11:58 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Personally, I can't see the difference between spatial and "open folder in new window", but I've only been using it a week or so. Spatial remembers the size, shape, and view preferences of each directory window, and doesn't allow multiple windows showing the same directory.
"Open Folder In New Window" Posted May 11, 2004 19:14 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > Spatial remembers the size, shape, and view preferences of each directory window, and doesn't allow multiple windows showing the same directory.Which is what makes is truly annoying (this is of course my personal, subjective opinion and has nothing to do with "quality" of GNOME). Luckily, there is a way to turn that off ;-)
"Open Folder In New Window" Posted May 12, 2004 12:19 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] It's what annoys me too -- annoys me with old Macs, too, and with OS X,where I regularly get a mild heart attack when I re-visit a folder that I scrolled down to the last icon the last time I was there. All my files gone! Eek! And then, I like a clean desk, am a tidy person generally, so when faced with a system that 'remembers' how I left everything the last time, and that keeps all the cruft I generate working around, I spend a lot of time tidying up. I much prefer a system that cleans up after me...
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