Tweaking [LWN.net]

Tweaking

Posted Mar 15, 2011 23:51 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by sramkrishna
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Unless it's related to eye sight issues, you shouldn't need to tweak a font.

And that is the sort of reasoning that really sets some people off. Why should I have to accept somebody else's choice of font? I stare at this screen for many, many hours over the course of the day. I honestly don't understand why I wouldn't want to optimize it for the most comfortable and efficient experience.

I know that my font choices don't work for others; I like them small and dense. My advanced age notwithstanding, my eyes are still pretty sharp; I want to use that gift to maximize the density of information in front of me. My wife complains about clutter and small text on my screen; my choices don't work for her at all. There is no right choice for everybody; it amazes me when people think that they, somehow, can come up with a universally optimal setting - especially for something as fundamental as the size of the text on the screen. We're not all the same.

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Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 0:29 UTC (Wed) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link]

I totally understand. I changed something in gconf today because the "smaller" font option was ridiculous.. the window title font was too small, and wasn't proportional the rest of the fonts on the terminal window. And so it goes..

I'm arguing from a designer's perspective as a technical person. :-) So if I set people off, please understand that I'm doing my level best to try to strike a balance in my conversations between all of you and it's not my intention to show that the project is arrogant or insensitive to the feedback given. What you say is important to us, and your feed back is important. Several us on the marketing team/shell team will be looking over this thread. I wasn't quite planning on going at it alone but you guys have all been nice to me :)

Jonathan, I'm in the same boat as you (advanced age not withstanding) my eyes are sharp and my font setup is probably similar to yours. On the font issue, I suspect that we're going to probably catch some heat there and probably have to look at it again. Bugzilla is your friend, please do put in bugs for these kind of things. Especially before feature freeze.

If I have to engage any more with y'all I'm going to have to break out the scotch.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 0:30 UTC (Wed) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link] (1 responses)

Conversely, I don't mind sharing that I have a sensitivity to light. In fact, I usually have to work in a completely dark room with just the right indirect lighting, and my monitor casing are covered in electrical tape to prevent reflections. Software wise, I have very carefully adjusted the lighting, fonts, sizes, and so forth so that it is more useable. I do green on black not because it's "cool" but because it is less bothersome, etc...

I don't pretend that my configuration is anything like what others want to use, but that's the beauty of being able to have a preference.

Jon.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 1:44 UTC (Wed) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link]

GNOME should support that use case. Although it won't put the electrical tape for you. Maybe GNOME 4 ;)

Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 5:02 UTC (Wed) by C.Gherardi (guest, #4233) [Link] (7 responses)

Unless it's related to eye sight issues, you shouldn't need to tweak a font.
And that is the sort of reasoning that really sets some people off. Why should I have to accept somebody else's choice of font? I stare at this screen for many, many hours over the course of the day. I honestly don't understand why I wouldn't want to optimize it for the most comfortable and efficient experience.

I've gone from an extreme settings tweaker to someone who largely uses the defaults for everything except his editor.

Every time I upgrade distro the default font and size changes slightly, and I complain that the old was better than the new. It irritates me for about a week and at some point it fades from memory, to be repeated on the next upgrade.

Perception is a funny thing, and "most comfortable and efficient experience" is difficult to evaluate objectively. I had a similar discussion with a tech writer at work, and his argument was that users dont know what they want (which gets no argument from me) and are rarely equipped with the knowledge to make good decisions in design, as short term irritation at (possibly beneficial) change clouds objectivity.

Over time the default fonts have improved, and i'm willing to give people who know a lot more about the intricacies of fonts and viewing all the latitude they want to improve things.

That said 'smaller' and 'small' would be welcome options.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 14:22 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (5 responses)

Over time the default fonts have improved, and i'm willing to give people who know a lot more about the intricacies of fonts and viewing all the latitude they want to improve things.

Nobody really wants to spend hours changing all the font settings, but the attitude that "you should accept our settings because we're designers" is condescending, bordering on the offensive. Of course, changing fonts has been a necessity on, for example, Red Hat systems because of the scarcity of decent pre-installed fonts, and that situation has improved, but if someone really does prefer a serif font for their window titles, they should be able to change it fairly easily.

Actually, if the "designers" can't come up with an effective interface for changing things like font styles or sizes which doesn't require choosing from a hundred separate font menus, they are not as great or innovative as they think they are. Dropping such choices altogether or neutering them just shows that they have accepted defeat on the matter. And claiming that "this is not what normal people do" is just an excuse.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 17, 2011 2:45 UTC (Thu) by C.Gherardi (guest, #4233) [Link] (4 responses)

Nobody really wants to spend hours changing all the font settings, but the attitude that "you should accept our settings because we're designers" is condescending, bordering on the offensive. Of course, changing fonts has been a necessity on, for example, Red Hat systems because of the scarcity of decent pre-installed fonts, and that situation has improved, but if someone really does prefer a serif font for their window titles, they should be able to change it fairly easily.

I manage more than 100 users, and only 1 of them has changed their default font given the ability to do so. So I agree that this isn't something 'normal' people do.

I agree that the attitude appears condescending, but I can't tell if that 'condescension' is justified (Dunning-Krueger etc). Spatial mode came and went, but other controversial things stayed. Fonts will probably be in the latter category, but I personally wont miss it and don't believe the silent majority will either.

My personal gripe will be the missing laptop power options. I dont own an music player. When flying I set up a large playlist in Amarok and shut the lid is down to save screen power and my laptop battery gets me through 90%+ of my flight. Having to keep the lid open is going to force me to listen to Aeroplane channels for half the flight.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 18, 2011 10:37 UTC (Fri) by jthill (subscriber, #56558) [Link] (2 responses)

Unless you're managing an uncommon set of users, I think you're at the wrong vantage point to see the problem.

Normal behavior on someone else's computer isn't normal behavior on your own.

Very few people's work demands enough of their computer that accommodations have to be made.

I've said it before: GNOME seems to be going the proprietary Apple/Microsoft route with ever-increasing doggedness, making the best environment they know how to make for 'normal' people. GNOME seems (from a distance now) to be measuring "best" as minimizing the volume of inexperienced users' baffled questions, and their vexed or bewildered responses to the answers.

I think that's a strategically unsound choice, but it's not my call and it doesn't irritate me -- so long as the tools themselves remain interoperable, and can use open-system standards to full advantage.

Because GNOME is not an open system. There are people posting on LWN who can't figure out how to make the simplest alterations to what they regard as their personal environment on their personal computer, and the answers they're getting aren't of the "here's the doc on how to do that" variety.

That a volunteer-based project is consciously excluding the "how do I make it do that?" crowd from its user base is ... well, like I say, I don't think it can last.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:03 UTC (Fri) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not really headed in the proprietary direction per se, but it does seem to go in weird cycles of being more Apple-like to less Apple-like. Unlike Apple and Microsoft software, however, it isn't being designed with the corporate desktop user or developer in mind, nor with due consideration for the need to manage large numbers of those desktops and provide an interface people in such environments are used to.

My main gripe is that, instead of this, it's actually trying to cater to some weird subset of novice users who want a "My First Linux Machine" UI. But those people are going to run one of the popular other interfaces from other more embedded/tablet projects, and not GNOME (or GNOME OS, or whatever, that ship has sailed). Sure, lots of really excitable enthusiasts will run GNOME 3, and it'll get some great reviews. But people on Slashdot (and even LWN) are not the millions of the mass market.

I'd love it if they'd gracefully accept that other projects have been targeting netbooks and tablets, that things like Android and Chrome OS have won there, and move on, back to core competencies. Yes, I have an "enterprise" hat on in all of this since I want GNOME to be the desktop of choice and relevance for the enterprise first and foremost.

Jon.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 28, 2011 19:27 UTC (Mon) by pcarrier (guest, #65446) [Link]

Unlike Apple and Microsoft software, however, it isn't being designed with the corporate desktop user or developer in mind

After spending a few months writing code under Windows, I cannot disagree more. Microsoft still hasn't implemented a dynamically resizable terminal (horizontal scrolling if you try), or proper completion in their shell. Or a configurable prompt AFAIK.

Many trivial changes could prove very pleasing to developers, but they just never, ever cared. The corporate developer can shut up and hack (win32 code).

The silent majority

Posted Mar 18, 2011 12:27 UTC (Fri) by lab (guest, #51153) [Link]

I manage more than 100 users, and only 1 of them has changed their default font given the ability to do so. So I agree that this isn't something 'normal' people do. ... but I personally wont miss it and don't believe the silent majority will either.

A couple of observations here.

"The silent majority" are fed shit, and have mostly resigned to that fact. Therefor they don't look to changing defaults. They'll just accept what they get, and try not to worry about it. That's a very far cry from being happy and content. I always believed that part of the "mission" of open source is, that we can actually teach people that they don't need to put up with shit, and deserve better.

Also, that 1 percent, that's us, the geeks. The slightly unadjusted types. It just so happens that these 1-percenters are also the ones making the software, and care deeply about the quality of things. Probably the worst thing any project can do, is to tell that 1% that their opinion and desires actually doesn't matter.

On a personal note, I would _never_ever_ consider using a platform, where I can not adjust font settings to my liking. Doesn't matter how great the rest is.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 16, 2011 16:05 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link]

> That said 'smaller' and 'small' would be welcome options.

That landed three weeks ago.

Tweaking

Posted Mar 17, 2011 17:10 UTC (Thu) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link]

The problem is that if somebody speaks positively of gnome, everyone else assumes they are in charge and believes, 'oh that is set in stone' I better complain instead of scratching that itch.

I actually disagree with the reasoning too (bad eyesight), but I also know how to change the value. The sad thing is I can count _7_ replies bashing on this as if it is an official mandate.

Of course there is going to be font change dialog (the setting just isn't presented in any gui), just as easy theming (prepackaged) will happen because it is cool and somebody will actually contribute.

It just has to be made, accepting that the first approach you try might get frown upon, just like linux....