The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 24, 2004 4:49 UTC (Wed) by wagner17 (guest, #5580)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Why is the editor always grumpy? Why can't it be the "The Happy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers" or something else?

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The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 24, 2004 9:38 UTC (Wed) by wolfrider (guest, #3105) [Link] (3 responses)

--Grumpy sells. ~:)

--Think about it - "typical" usage, more people will likely click on "grumpy" to see what the editor is complaining about this time... "Happy" articles just don't have as much "oomph." It's all subjective, but Conflict is the Essence of Drama.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 24, 2004 16:30 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (2 responses)

Besides, poorly designed software has the tendency to make even the happiest user grumpy, at least occasionally. Hell hath no fury like a computer user that's been annoyed by crappy software.

I really like the Grumpy Editor series. I would like to see an article on window managers. I've never found one that I really like.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 24, 2004 17:33 UTC (Wed) by riel (subscriber, #3142) [Link]

We all love the Grumpy Editor. Dunno if that'll make him happier though ;)

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 24, 2004 21:32 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> I would like to see an article on window managers. I've never found one
> that I really like.

The article or the wm? ;-)

Then you should seriously re-consider fvwm. I've yet to find a feature that doesn't exist there. Sorry about OT.

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to Image Viewers

Posted Mar 26, 2004 2:17 UTC (Fri) by komarek (guest, #7295) [Link]

I love the grumpy editor series, because I have all the same complaints. I think it is telling that the accomplished editor of LWN, who is author and kernel hacker and consultant, can't find his way through the current "usability enhancements" of the Gnome project to get work done. That he can't find a replacement for a program we've all been using since 1995 (I remember the pre-3.10a days of xv, as far as that goes).

He's grumpy because he has a set of tools that work, but are getting old and are unmaintained. And nobody is replacing them. There's no need to reinvent the Crescent wrench, though a number of infomercials try. But for some unknown reason people feel a need to reinvent the concept of calander software. Just think how nice it would be if image viewers (not editors, just viewers) evolved their interfaces in a consistent, harmonious way. So that you wouldn't have to guess backspace for one, left arrow for another, and p for another.

Imagine that image viewers worked like emacs editing keystrokes: I can use ctrl-a in most programs to go to the beginning of the line. Well, that used to be true, right up until all the KDE and Gnome folks got stupid on us and decided that ctrl-c, which even DOS knows should send a break signal, now means cut (or copy, whatever). I've got news for the KDE and Gnome devs trying to mimic windows -- the majority of their audience are using unix-like systems. And when using unix, I expect things to be unix-y. If they want to continue attracting smart unix people to their projects, they'll have to quit doing things that piss-off unix people.

Obviously, I am grumpy. And that's probably why I feel such affinity for the grumpy editor series.

-Paul Komarek