[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Marcos Pérez López marcosdump at gmail.com
Mon Feb 12 00:47:57 PST 2007
Linus escribió:
> This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
> Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
> use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
> since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
Yo también soy idiota. No se configurar la mayor parte de las opciones
del escritorio, y si he podido empezar a usar linux es porque Gnome me
lo facilitó.
No creo que todo el mundo que se tenga que sentar ante un ordenador
tenga la obligación de ser un "super programador". Hay mucha gente que
necesita usar el ordenador para tareas sencillas y no necesita saber
configurar hasta el último rincón de su escritorio.
Por eso precisamente Windows está en la posición que está, porque
entre otras cosas se preocupó por hacer un sistema operativo sencillo
de usar para la mayoría de la gente.
Yo no digo a nadie que use Gnome, pero GNOME ES BUENO porque es lo que
le hace falta a una parte importante de la sociedad, y quien quiera
más cosas, pues que no use Gnome pero que no lo critique.
A mi no me gustan los plátanos, ¡pues que exterminen los plataneros!
¿Quién es el NAZI?
Nada más, esto para LINUS para que piense.
LINUS, NO SABES LEER ESPAÑOL, ¿A VER SI VAS A SER IDIOTA TU TAMBIÉN?
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Mon Feb 12 07:54:29 PST 2007
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Marcos P=E9rez L=F3pez wrote:
> =
> Yo tambi=E9n soy idiota. No se configurar la mayor parte de las opciones
> del escritorio, y si he podido empezar a usar linux es porque Gnome me
> lo facilit=F3.
There is a _huge_ difference between "being easy to use" and "_only_ being =
easy to use".
"Being easy to use" is important, because it means that there isn't a very =
high learning curve. That's _good_.
"ONLY being easy to use" is bad, because it means that once the initial =
learning curve is over, maybe you know the program, but you can't actually =
do what you WANT to do. And that's *bad*. That's *really* bad. It's =
actually much worse than being hard to use to begin with, in many ways.
Game designers know about this. You don't want to make your games too =
challenging, because if you do, people never get "into" them. But if you =
don't give people challenges along with the game, and don't allow them to =
"grow" with the game, the game sucks. It migth be as easy as making things =
just "fall faster" (Tetris), or it might be giving the person new =
capabilities ("bigger guns").
Gnome people seem to think that once you "got into it", you never want to =
do anything more. Not true.
Linus
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Jeff Waugh jdub at perkypants.org
Wed Feb 14 16:18:02 PST 2007
<quote who="Linus Torvalds">
> Gnome people seem to think that once you "got into it", you never want to
> do anything more. Not true.
Like we said before, that's simply not the case. Please, let's not continue
this discussion. It was unfortunate enough the first time.
- Jeff
--
Open CeBIT 2007: Sydney, Australia http://www.opencebit.com.au/
"Everything I knew about TCP/IP I had downloaded the same day I started
hacking the net code." - Alan Cox
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Christian F.K. Schaller christian at fluendo.com
Thu Feb 15 02:49:25 PST 2007
Hi Linus,
Maybe you should actually try using GNOME for a Month or so instead of
keep repeating your often wrong assumptions?
GNOME offers a lot of customization options, but some of them requires
you for instance to get extra applications to easily get to. An often
used such add-on for power users is Devils Pie:
http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie
But there are many more such add-ons available and of course a lot of
things a power user can tweak using gconf-editor.
If you are up for a challenge why don't you use GNOME for a Month then
come and do a talk about your experience at this years GUADEC in
England? Could maybe be a good way to start a constructive dialog
instead of this useless mudslinging?
Christian
On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 07:54 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Marcos Pérez López wrote:
> >
> > Yo también soy idiota. No se configurar la mayor parte de las opciones
> > del escritorio, y si he podido empezar a usar linux es porque Gnome me
> > lo facilitó.
>
> There is a _huge_ difference between "being easy to use" and "_only_ being
> easy to use".
>
> "Being easy to use" is important, because it means that there isn't a very
> high learning curve. That's _good_.
>
> "ONLY being easy to use" is bad, because it means that once the initial
> learning curve is over, maybe you know the program, but you can't actually
> do what you WANT to do. And that's *bad*. That's *really* bad. It's
> actually much worse than being hard to use to begin with, in many ways.
>
> Game designers know about this. You don't want to make your games too
> challenging, because if you do, people never get "into" them. But if you
> don't give people challenges along with the game, and don't allow them to
> "grow" with the game, the game sucks. It migth be as easy as making things
> just "fall faster" (Tetris), or it might be giving the person new
> capabilities ("bigger guns").
>
> Gnome people seem to think that once you "got into it", you never want to
> do anything more. Not true.
>
> Linus
> _______________________________________________
Desktop_architects mailing list Desktop_architects at lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Thu Feb 15 09:01:23 PST 2007
On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
>
> Maybe you should actually try using GNOME for a Month or so instead of
> keep repeating your often wrong assumptions?
You know what? Last night, I put my money where my mouth is.
I did something better than any Gnome user has apparently ever done: I
actually wrote the code to fix the thing.
> GNOME offers a lot of customization options, but some of them requires
> you for instance to get extra applications to easily get to. An often
> used such add-on for power users is Devils Pie:
> http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie
I don't know why the gnome guys are so defensive about this.
Why the hell do you have to point to bogus programs that don't actually do
what I want? Why do people claim that what I want is not something anybody
wants?
I *know* what I want. I *know* gnome doesn't support it. How do I know?
I've used it. I looked at the code. I talked to the original author of the
code. The author, and the code, all agree: gnome doesn't do what I want.
I want something very simple: I want to configure my mouse button window
events. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Everybody else can do it,
gnome does not. My laptop has a two-button mouse, which means that I want
the right button to do something more useful than show me the menu that I
never use.
Am I evil for wanting that kind of configurability?
And no, Devil's pie does *not* magically add any customization that isn't
already there. The gnome window manager simply DOES NOT HAVE THE
CAPABILITY to do something as simple as let the user decide what a
right-click on the window frame does. It is HARDCODED into the C source
code.
How do I know? I've looked. Yesterday I even fixed it. I sent the patches
off to add the capabilities.
And I find it *offensive* how Gnome people can never just admit that they
can't do something. There's always an excuse: "My grandma doesn't want to
do it, and finds it confusing". That's not a word-for-word quote, but it
comes damn close.
Really, I'm not kidding. It's either "Grandma", "Mum" or a discussion
about nipples and tits.
It's never "we can't do it, please help us".
> If you are up for a challenge why don't you use GNOME for a Month then
> come and do a talk about your experience at this years GUADEC in
> England? Could maybe be a good way to start a constructive dialog
> instead of this useless mudslinging?
I've sent out patches. The code is actually _cleaner_ after my patches,
and the end result is more capable. We'll see what happens.
THAT is constructive.
What I find unconstructive is how the gnome people always make *excuses*.
It took me a few hours to actually do the patches. It wasn't that hard. So
why didn't I do it years ago?
I'll tell you why: because gnome apologists don't say "please send us
patches". No. They basically make it clear that they aren't even
*interested* in fixing things, because their dear old Mum isn't interested
in the feature.
Do you think that's "constructive"?
So let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they
actually improve the code (not just add a feature). I also guarantee that
they actually make things *more* logical rather than less (with my
patches, double-clicking on the title bar isn't a special event: it's
configurable along with right- and middle-clicking, and with the exact
same syntax for all).
But why, oh, why, have gnome people not just said "please fix it then"?
Instead, I _still_ (now after I sent out the patch) hear more of your
kvetching about how you actually do everything right, and it's somehow
*my* fault that I find things limiting.
Here's a damn big clue: the reason I find gnome limiting is BECAUSE IT IS.
Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their
heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it
makes things more logical, and code more readable.
Linus
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Hubert Figuiere hub at figuiere.net
Fri Feb 16 09:52:57 PST 2007
Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> Maybe you should actually try using GNOME for a Month or so instead of
>> keep repeating your often wrong assumptions?
>
> You know what? Last night, I put my money where my mouth is.
>
> I did something better than any Gnome user has apparently ever done: I
> actually wrote the code to fix the thing.
[...]
> So let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they
> actually improve the code (not just add a feature). I also guarantee that
> they actually make things *more* logical rather than less (with my
> patches, double-clicking on the title bar isn't a special event: it's
> configurable along with right- and middle-clicking, and with the exact
> same syntax for all).
So Linus, where can we find the patch so that we can all share the
enthusiasm?
I couldn't find it in either metacity mailing lists or bugzilla.
Hub
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Fri Feb 16 10:12:11 PST 2007
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
>
> So Linus, where can we find the patch so that we can all share the
> enthusiasm?
>
> I couldn't find it in either metacity mailing lists or bugzilla.
I sent them to the gnomecc list (the changes to let control center enable
it were bigger than the changes to the metacity ones, but more
importantly, control-center actually had a mailing list address in its
README).
The metacity patches I also sent to maintainers that I tried to google
for, because there isn't even any submission address in the sources that I
could find.
Of course, the gnomecc mailing list is "by members only", so I don't know
if the patches ever got accepted by the moderator.
Quite frankly, I think it's interesting how (a) no developer contacts were
listed and (b) the one that did list it doesn't even accept email from
outside.
I'm attaching a tar-ball of the patches since you seem to know *what* the
mailing lists are and may even be subscribed. This tar-ball contains
src/metacity-2.17.5/0001-Clean-up-double-middle-right-click-frame-action.patch
src/metacity-2.17.5/0002-Add-lower-and-menu-to-title-bar-action-events.patch
src/metacity-2.17.5/0003-Add-the-prefs.c-variables-for-middle-and-right-click-actions.patch
src/metacity-2.17.5/0004-Allow-actually-changing-preferences-for-middle-and-right-click.patch
src/metacity-2.17.5/0005-Fix-some-obvious-and-harmless-cut-and-paste-errors.patch
src/control-center-2.17.5/0001-Add-support-for-new-titlebar-actions.patch
src/control-center-2.17.5/0002-gnome-window-properties-learn-about-mouse-actions.patch
which should be obvious enough ;)
Feel free to send them forward to the right people (and maybe give hints
to them that if you have a README file that says "REPORTING BUGS AND
SUBMITTING PATCHES", it might be good to actually give an email to send
things to, instead of saying "Send me mail" with no email address actually
ever mentioned!)
I dislike bugzilla in general, but it's *especially* useless since I'm not
really interested in signing up for yet another account.
Linus
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[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Christian F.K. Schaller christian at fluendo.com
Mon Feb 19 01:54:16 PST 2007
Hi Linus,
So I added your patches to bugzilla this weekend, in an attempt to be
constructive on my own part also. So far two of them are merged and
based on the discussion I see that a 3rd one will probably go in today.
If you are interested the tracker bug is here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408898
In regards to Devil's pie I didn't link it as an example of something
that did exactly what you wanted, I linked it to show that there where
tools for doing further customizing of components in GNOME. My feeling
was that you where extrapolating from your one missing feature that
GNOME offered no configurable features. As a sidenote the patches seems
to be going into Metacity, but there is still some debate whether to
activate them in the main prefs gui, one suggestion was to add these GUI
options to Devil's pie instead of to the basic prefs tool while others
say that maybe we should look through all the options for metacity
currently only available through gconf-edit and revamp the gui to make
them more easily accessible.
Christian
On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 10:12 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> >
> > So Linus, where can we find the patch so that we can all share the
> > enthusiasm?
> >
> > I couldn't find it in either metacity mailing lists or bugzilla.
>
> I sent them to the gnomecc list (the changes to let control center enable
> it were bigger than the changes to the metacity ones, but more
> importantly, control-center actually had a mailing list address in its
> README).
>
> The metacity patches I also sent to maintainers that I tried to google
> for, because there isn't even any submission address in the sources that I
> could find.
>
> Of course, the gnomecc mailing list is "by members only", so I don't know
> if the patches ever got accepted by the moderator.
>
> Quite frankly, I think it's interesting how (a) no developer contacts were
> listed and (b) the one that did list it doesn't even accept email from
> outside.
>
> I'm attaching a tar-ball of the patches since you seem to know *what* the
> mailing lists are and may even be subscribed. This tar-ball contains
>
> src/metacity-2.17.5/0001-Clean-up-double-middle-right-click-frame-action.patch
> src/metacity-2.17.5/0002-Add-lower-and-menu-to-title-bar-action-events.patch
> src/metacity-2.17.5/0003-Add-the-prefs.c-variables-for-middle-and-right-click-actions.patch
> src/metacity-2.17.5/0004-Allow-actually-changing-preferences-for-middle-and-right-click.patch
> src/metacity-2.17.5/0005-Fix-some-obvious-and-harmless-cut-and-paste-errors.patch
> src/control-center-2.17.5/0001-Add-support-for-new-titlebar-actions.patch
> src/control-center-2.17.5/0002-gnome-window-properties-learn-about-mouse-actions.patch
>
> which should be obvious enough ;)
>
> Feel free to send them forward to the right people (and maybe give hints
> to them that if you have a README file that says "REPORTING BUGS AND
> SUBMITTING PATCHES", it might be good to actually give an email to send
> things to, instead of saying "Send me mail" with no email address actually
> ever mentioned!)
>
> I dislike bugzilla in general, but it's *especially* useless since I'm not
> really interested in signing up for yet another account.
>
> Linus
> _______________________________________________
Desktop_architects mailing list Desktop_architects at lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
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Fluendo S.A.
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[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Mon Feb 19 14:14:59 PST 2007
[ away for the long weekend, am back now ]
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
>
> So I added your patches to bugzilla this weekend, in an attempt to be
> constructive on my own part also. So far two of them are merged and
> based on the discussion I see that a 3rd one will probably go in today.
>
> If you are interested the tracker bug is here:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408898
Heh. One of the reasons I dislike bugzilla: it works differently for
everybody. The gnome bugzilla looks a lot prettier than the kernel one,
but either I'm confused or you are, because you seem to have made all the
patches separate bugzilla entries (maybe that's just how gnome patches are
supposed to be done? It was nonobvious to actually find the discussion
about the patches themselves from the bug you pointed at ;^).
> In regards to Devil's pie I didn't link it as an example of something
> that did exactly what you wanted, I linked it to show that there where
> tools for doing further customizing of components in GNOME.
Sure. And that's what "control-center" is too.
I'm a bit confused why it's apparently considered to be a good idea to do
something in an add-on program, but not in the standard control center
app?
Yeah, Devil's pie apparently does other things too (ie it waits for window
events etc, if I understood it right), but in many ways, for things that
are just pure configuration, it seems to be some psychological trick where
things that aren't "allowed" by the core people because they are against
the HID guidelines can apparently only be broken by external programs?
It's like "we know people want to break out guidelines, and we add the
config options to allow them to do so, but then because they break the
guidelines we don't allow those options to be set by any standard
configuration tool".
It's that a bit dodgy? Wouldn't it be better to just admit that the HID
guidelines are just defaults - instead of being in denial about it and
saying "they're just defaults, but they are defaults that you have to use
some other program to change?"
> My feeling was that you where extrapolating from your one missing
> feature that GNOME offered no configurable features.
Sure I was. No question about that. But I'm not exactly extrapolating from
a single feature. It was just one _I_ happened to care about, but others
care about other features, and looking at the bugzilla discussions, I
notice that people there argue about removing *other* config options (ie
look at how there's somebody pointing to bugzilla entry 154614: "Consider
removing the auto-raise preference from the user interface").
In other words, in the very same discussion about the one feature _I_ care
about, there's another gnome developer who argues that gnome should remove
ANOTHER configuration entry that somebody else is bound to care about.
So I object to you claiming that I'm only extrapolating from "one missing
feature". For _me_ it was one missing feature. But that's not what I use
to extrapolate from. I use the *fact* that Gnome has in the past removed
other features, and is *still* apparently talking about removing yet more
config options from view.
WHY? It's a disease, I tell you. The apparent inability to accept the fact
that we're not all a uniform gray paste.
That very bugzilla entry shows exactly the problem I have. Apparently
gnome thinks that "few people" using a feature means that it shouldn't be
exposed. Can you say "gray uniform goo, based on some populist message
where experts and people who have an opinion are to be shunned and looked
down upon"?
So yes, for *me* it was one feature that simply makes Gnome totally
unusable on some of my machines (and since I want uniformity on *my*
machines, that measn that it's unusable on them all). But that's not the
reason I extended it to "gnome people don't seem to like people who want
to do their own thing".
Linus
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Elijah Newren newren at gmail.com
Mon Feb 19 20:41:36 PST 2007
Hi Linus,
Thanks for the patches. I have been really busy, so I apologize for
not responding sooner to the public or private emails. In general, I
think it makes sense to include your capability into metacity. The
clean-ups are always appreciated too. Unfortunately, I still don't
have a lot of time, but I'll try to quickly respond to a couple points
(and hopefully get to the patches before too long, though Thomas is
already handling some of them)...
On 2/19/07, Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> Heh. One of the reasons I dislike bugzilla: it works differently for
> everybody. The gnome bugzilla looks a lot prettier than the kernel one,
> but either I'm confused or you are, because you seem to have made all the
> patches separate bugzilla entries (maybe that's just how gnome patches are
> supposed to be done? It was nonobvious to actually find the discussion
> about the patches themselves from the bug you pointed at ;^).
(Sidenote: I would have preferred Christian creating two bugs, one
against metacity and one against the control center, with multiple
patches per bug--but it's not a big deal)
> > In regards to Devil's pie I didn't link it as an example of something
> > that did exactly what you wanted, I linked it to show that there where
> > tools for doing further customizing of components in GNOME.
>
> Sure. And that's what "control-center" is too.
>
> I'm a bit confused why it's apparently considered to be a good idea to do
> something in an add-on program, but not in the standard control center
> app?
I think it's more a question of target audience and design criteria.
In terms of your particular feature, my personal opinion is that it
belongs in neither the control center nor Devil's pie--though I do
believe the feature belongs in metacity and deserves to be part of
some GUI configuration. A full explanation would require a longer
email, and one better suited to a different mailing list. But then
again, I don't really have any control or apparently even any
influence over the control center anyway (even the window manager
related configuration parts).
> > My feeling was that you where extrapolating from your one missing
> > feature that GNOME offered no configurable features.
>
> Sure I was. No question about that. But I'm not exactly extrapolating from
> a single feature. It was just one _I_ happened to care about, but others
> care about other features, and looking at the bugzilla discussions, I
> notice that people there argue about removing *other* config options (ie
> look at how there's somebody pointing to bugzilla entry 154614: "Consider
> removing the auto-raise preference from the user interface").
>
> In other words, in the very same discussion about the one feature _I_ care
> about, there's another gnome developer who argues that gnome should remove
> ANOTHER configuration entry that somebody else is bound to care about.
>
> So I object to you claiming that I'm only extrapolating from "one missing
> feature". For _me_ it was one missing feature. But that's not what I use
> to extrapolate from. I use the *fact* that Gnome has in the past removed
> other features, and is *still* apparently talking about removing yet more
> config options from view.
>
> WHY? It's a disease, I tell you. The apparent inability to accept the fact
> that we're not all a uniform gray paste.
>
> That very bugzilla entry shows exactly the problem I have. Apparently
> gnome thinks that "few people" using a feature means that it shouldn't be
> exposed. Can you say "gray uniform goo, based on some populist message
> where experts and people who have an opinion are to be shunned and looked
> down upon"?
Heh, I happen to be the filer of bug 154614. The reason it was filed
was not "few people use this feature" but rather "it is causing lots
of collateral damage, making the cost of exposing the feature too
high". The arguments in the bug about the userbase of the feature
were more about why removing the option from the UI was a better
choice for fixing that specific problem than adding several paragraphs
of explanatory text to the configuration dialog (note that I did not
suggest removing the functionality from metacity). I do admit that I
don't think I was particularly coherent in that report, however.
Also, FWIW, I'm one of the people who uses not just one, but multiple
features in metacity that are used by "few people". I can list at
least three such options off the top of my head, and am arguably from
a much smaller niche/userbase than someone who wants to configure
button click actions. I guess that makes me a person with an opinion
that _I_ shun and look down upon? ;-)
To be fair, though, you have made some good points. Metacity is still
missing a number of features I think it should have, has a number of
places in need of some code cleanup, and suffers from more bugs than
I'd like. If only there were more hours in the day... Anyway,
thanks for helping fix some of it.
Cheers,
Elijah
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Christian F.K. Schaller christian at fluendo.com
Tue Feb 20 09:52:22 PST 2007
On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 14:14 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> [ away for the long weekend, am back now ]
>
> On Mon, 19 Feb 2007, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:
> >
> > So I added your patches to bugzilla this weekend, in an attempt to be
> > constructive on my own part also. So far two of them are merged and
> > based on the discussion I see that a 3rd one will probably go in today.
> >
> > If you are interested the tracker bug is here:
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=408898
>
> Heh. One of the reasons I dislike bugzilla: it works differently for
> everybody. The gnome bugzilla looks a lot prettier than the kernel one,
> but either I'm confused or you are, because you seem to have made all the
> patches separate bugzilla entries (maybe that's just how gnome patches are
> supposed to be done? It was nonobvious to actually find the discussion
> about the patches themselves from the bug you pointed at ;^).
Yeah, its was me being confused :) I didn't look at the patches so I
just assumed you split them out because they where fully independent
(please don't ask me to try to explain how such a stupid assumption came
about :)
> > In regards to Devil's pie I didn't link it as an example of something
> > that did exactly what you wanted, I linked it to show that there where
> > tools for doing further customizing of components in GNOME.
>
> Sure. And that's what "control-center" is too.
>
> I'm a bit confused why it's apparently considered to be a good idea to do
> something in an add-on program, but not in the standard control center
> app?
>
> Yeah, Devil's pie apparently does other things too (ie it waits for window
> events etc, if I understood it right), but in many ways, for things that
> are just pure configuration, it seems to be some psychological trick where
> things that aren't "allowed" by the core people because they are against
> the HID guidelines can apparently only be broken by external programs?
>
> It's like "we know people want to break out guidelines, and we add the
> config options to allow them to do so, but then because they break the
> guidelines we don't allow those options to be set by any standard
> configuration tool".
>
> It's that a bit dodgy? Wouldn't it be better to just admit that the HID
> guidelines are just defaults - instead of being in denial about it and
> saying "they're just defaults, but they are defaults that you have to use
> some other program to change?"
Ok, so the 'standard' GUI tools of GNOME is what everyone who installs
GNOME sees and gets, so the thinking has been that we should keep the
default preferences and configuration tools without to many items in
order to make navigating them quick and easy as the items which are
there are things which are meant to be critical for people to be able to
adjust. (yes, we/I are aware that what is critical and not is a
subjective thing, but lets call the current options made available with
a GUI by default the rough consensus of what is critical within the
community.)
In regards to having extra applications that lets you control and adjust
things this is not seen as contrary to our policy as any user who
installs such tools/gui's are to be considered advanced/experienced
enough to be able to use his/hers system even if the control center has
5000 items. But at that point it is no longer 'we' who push these extra
options on the users, but something they choose to add themselves. The
problem is and have never been that the GNOME community thinks people
shouldn't be allowed to tweak their UI, instead the idea was that we
keep the 'core' slim and clean and then people who want more control can
install extra tools to get extra configureability. Due to this a lot of
applications and tools in GNOME do support more adjustments than what is
obvious in the normal GUI, and which people can activate either with the
gconf-editor 'registry tool' or with tools such as Devils Pie, gTweakUI
and so on.
> > My feeling was that you where extrapolating from your one missing
> > feature that GNOME offered no configurable features.
>
> Sure I was. No question about that. But I'm not exactly extrapolating from
> a single feature. It was just one _I_ happened to care about, but others
> care about other features, and looking at the bugzilla discussions, I
> notice that people there argue about removing *other* config options (ie
> look at how there's somebody pointing to bugzilla entry 154614: "Consider
> removing the auto-raise preference from the user interface").
>
> In other words, in the very same discussion about the one feature _I_ care
> about, there's another gnome developer who argues that gnome should remove
> ANOTHER configuration entry that somebody else is bound to care about.
>
> So I object to you claiming that I'm only extrapolating from "one missing
> feature". For _me_ it was one missing feature. But that's not what I use
> to extrapolate from. I use the *fact* that Gnome has in the past removed
> other features, and is *still* apparently talking about removing yet more
> config options from view.
>
> WHY? It's a disease, I tell you. The apparent inability to accept the fact
> that we're not all a uniform gray paste.
>
> That very bugzilla entry shows exactly the problem I have. Apparently
> gnome thinks that "few people" using a feature means that it shouldn't be
> exposed. Can you say "gray uniform goo, based on some populist message
> where experts and people who have an opinion are to be shunned and looked
> down upon"?
>
> So yes, for *me* it was one feature that simply makes Gnome totally
> unusable on some of my machines (and since I want uniformity on *my*
> machines, that measn that it's unusable on them all). But that's not the
> reason I extended it to "gnome people don't seem to like people who want
> to do their own thing".
I hear you and I have at times also inwards in the GNOME community tried
to get people to be more clear in communicating that when they talk
about 'removing a feature' it is not in the context of 'removing it',
but in the context of not exposing it in the default GUI.
I think part of the problem why this has grown to such an issue for
people who don't follow GNOME closely has been that maybe we have failed
in GNOME to package and present the power user tools actually available
in a good way. We should maybe even make it a requirement that when
someone removes something from the default GUI there is a requirement to
add it to an add-on tool in the same go.
I mean your feature was actually missing until your patches now are
being merged, but there are others already in there not exposed and thus
'gone' from the view of many, but I don't think you or anyone else would
have had much of a problem with that if it had been clear that easy to
use tools to adjust and manage these things had been available with a
'apt-get install gnome-power-tools' or something along those lines.
I also don't think that we managed to communicate clearly that good
patches adding features will normally be merged, but that the GUI to
control these new features might end up going into a tool like gTweakUI
instead of into the control center. Instead I feel there has grown an
impression out there that since there is that the hesitation to add more
options to the default gui tools also means that getting the
'infrastructure' code in terms of support for certain features into the
code is also hard.
I would also like to say that, while the public image might give a
different impression, ever since GNOME 2.0 I think the number of GUI
options in GNOME have grown steadily. And while 'removing' some features
from the config has been talked about and even done a few times it is in
reality a very very rare occurrence. The single biggest 'feature
removal' was probably the switch from Sawfish to metacity, but that
change was not done as I saw some people claim on Slashdot done due to
'to many configuration options in Sawfish', but due to Sawfish going
basically unmaintained as the maintainer got a job of Apple. Sawfish
being written in its own Lisp dialect and coming with its own Lisp
interpreter was not something we at the time had a lot of volunteers
(aka anyone) wanting to take over maintenance of so a new window manager
had to be found. Metacity actually become the new window manager due to
most GNOME devs switching to it willingly, so even though its gotten a
lot of criticism over the years for its sparseness of features it
actually got chosen due to wide public adoption combined with being in C
like the rest of GNOME and not as a top-down decision from an
undefinable cabal of community leaders :)
Christian
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Thilo Pfennig thilopfennig at foresightlinux.org
Tue Feb 20 19:34:36 PST 2007
On 2/21/07, Christian F.K. Schaller <christian at fluendo.com> wrote:>
The problem is and have never been that the GNOME community thinks people
> shouldn't be allowed to tweak their UI, instead the idea was that we
> keep the 'core' slim and clean and then people who want more control can
> install extra tools to get extra configureability.
I think this may be the core question. Generally the perception of GNOME vs.
KDE is that if you want to configure everything you should take KDE - and if
you like it simple (KISS) take GNOME. Although this is true in many aspects
from my point of view and although this may sound like a good idea I think
that this truely hurts the free desktops. It is not so much the question
what Linus thinks or what GNOME.org thinks. The question is what is in the
interest of the users?
The problem I see is that users are just not acting like we expect. So there
are KDE users who sometimes like simplicity - and also the GNOME lover who
likes things to be simple sometimes needs a very complicated configuration
in order to get his job done. I think a desktop that wants to be of any
impact must target every user and every usage. As a desktop you can not
really focus on some user preferences or desktop usages. A desktop lies the
base ground for every possible activity of a user - so it can not act like
an application like Inkscape or Jokosher that focus on a specific user
group.
This is in contrast to the common marketing views. I think GNOME has, in the
past, not targeted all those user groups. Also I think the question is if it
is really better to reduce the diversity of solutions. I don't really think
that every decisions that where made with usability in mind where always
based on hard usability data. GNOME has the reputation of rejecting patches
often (I hear that every day) - be it true or not (i have not made any
statistics). For me it is still the most usable desktop, nontheless.
One can not really question the reception of GNOME of users (like Linus). It
is what it is - if GNOMEs policies are misunderstood or lead to frustration
we must accept and understand that. And learn. Sure there will never be the
perfect desktop without any frustrated users. But it is important to
understand the criticism.
To get more practical I think the user should be able to select his
experience level and preferences and then get the interface he likes best
(also should have the opportunity to switch later). From what I have seen so
far there can never be the one desktop or user interface that does usability
best. Some users will be happy most of things look and behave as much as on
Windows XP or Mac OS (where they come from) and for some even GNOME is much
too complicated. I think it is plain wrong if a desktops decides for the
user. He should decide if this is the users choice. I myself like the
desktop to a) be very intuitive right from the start and b) making decisions
for me so i just have to find out how things work and do not have to waste
my time to customize. Others think just the opposit is best.
Summary. GNOME or any other desktop who likes to be of any impact can not
focus on specific user preferences but must find a way to support as much
possible user wishes and desktop flavors as possible. This is VERY difficult
but I think the other direction is wrong, unless you want to provide a
minority desktop (like a desktop for music makers,...)
regards,
Thilo
-- =
Thilo Pfennig
http://wiki.foresightlinux.com/confluence/display/~vinci/
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[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Tue Feb 20 20:24:39 PST 2007
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
>
> The problem I see is that users are just not acting like we expect.
I definitely agree.
And I think you hit one of the basic issues in:
> A desktop lies the base ground for every possible activity of a user -
> so it can not act like an application like Inkscape or Jokosher that
> focus on a specific user group.
Exactly.
A desktop (especially the window manager) ends up being not only very much
in your face, but at the same time it's not something where you can really
specialize all that much. There is no sane "niche" outside of some really
odd usage schenarios (eg small-screen mobile, or very controlled kiosk
mode etc). You need to support "everybody" within some definition of
"everybody".
And it's not really a "choice". For example, I've obviously made it very
clear that I tend to use KDE on all my machines, but the fact is, a lot
of distributions end up coming with one or the other (or having support be
very lopsided even when they come with both).
My daughters use gnome, for example - not because I think it's "simpler"
(they older one has been able to mess up the desktop and side-bars so much
that anybody who claims that gnome is "uncluttered" and "simple" has
obviously never seen the chaos that passed for my daughter).
They use gnome because I don't actually _use_ their machines, but I
maintain them, and since I was running on ppc64 and wanted a common
distro for all my machines, the simplest choice was Fedora Core. Which
doesn't even install KDE by default, I think (but even if it does: the
default WM environment is gnome, so if you just show your kids how to use
it, that's what they have).
> To get more practical I think the user should be able to select his
> experience level and preferences and then get the interface he likes best
> (also should have the opportunity to switch later).
I would _heartily_ agree with that. To get back to my daughters - the one
who messed up her desktop is perfectly able to make her wall-papers be
some disgustingly cute thing that has a hot-pink-on-pink theme or
whatever, but she is also perfectly able to mess up the menu bar. I think
she has about ten copies of the Gnome "xeyes" applet, and she ended up
with TWO gnome menu entries.
Would it be a bad idea to have a mode where you can't even do silly things
like that by mistake? Keep the core menu entry fixed, for example? No
doubt. When it comes to making a mess of it, my daughter is better at
_creating_ the mess than she is at straightening the end result out.
But does that mean that you shouldn't be able to configure things if you
want? Hell no. It just means that _different_ users have different views
of what "confusing" and "configurability" means.
A lot of users will findthings confusing whether they really are or not:
the problem really isn't necessarily in the desktop, but "between the
keyboard and the chair". So trying to minimize confusion is just a dead
end: you simply *cannot* do it. People will be confused by things that
others take for granted as a "must have".
Just live with it.
And yes, I suspect a lot of people are like my kids - their machines are
really maintained by somebody else. People who are afraid of confusing "my
dear old Mum" may be in that exact situation: dear old Mum *really* isn't
interested in configurability, because some people just want a web browser
and an email client. Not having the configurability be visible can be a
good idea.
But that doesn't mean that hard-core people want to edit some windows
registry-like text-only nightmare either (hey, I'm hardcore, but there's
no way I want to look up config entry names with google just to figure out
how to get "focus-follows-mouse" - I want the nice graphical thing, thank
you very much). But yes, maybe you want to hide that one from dear old
Mum, who really learnt to click her windows, and would be deathly afraid
of any question she doesn't even understand.
And yes, it doesn't have to be a "expert options" thing. Maybe it's a
hardcoded setup that you actually have to choose in the GDM login panel:
kind of like the session switcher. I'd be perfectly happy to do a big
thing like that - and yet it would already be technical enough that I
doubt the normal kind of "what happens if I go into the expert menu" kind
of person would do it.
In fact, the *best* option is to probably make the "non-expert" mode not
just hide the configuration tool entries, but actually *not*even*honor*
them. Why? Because then, if you screw up, you just log in to the "basic
window manager", and the expert config entries you screwed up while you
tested "expert mode" simply don't take effect.
So even if somebody thinks he is an expert, if it gets scary, they just
downgrade, and the messed-up "expert choices" simply become null and void.
But thinking that "users get confused" is a reason to make it hard for
users that do NOT get confused is just horrible. People differ. It's
really that simple.
Linus
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Thilo Pfennig thilopfennig at foresightlinux.org
Wed Feb 21 04:31:02 PST 2007
On 2/21/07, Linus Torvalds <torvalds at linux-foundation.org> wrote:
Would it be a bad idea to have a mode where you can't even do silly things
> like that by mistake? Keep the core menu entry fixed, for example? No
> doubt. When it comes to making a mess of it, my daughter is better at
> _creating_ the mess than she is at straightening the end result out.
I often wished that there would be something like a reset to default or
repair. (see also bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D387947 ).
One other thing people hate is that they I forced to decide whiuch desktop
they end up (including myself). Isn't this the story (of at leats KDE and
GNOME): GNOME was invented because KDE was actually not really free. Now
both are. Now we have different toolkits and also different development
strategies. But users use both desktops (and also many love XFCE). So a
free desktop tends to be "dirty" in the sense that people switch back and
forth and rarely use a clean desktop. And OTOH outside of Linux community
really cares about all these desktops. But if one follows discussions and
blogs one would think that these desktops are really of any importance
(which they are not in the computer world, still). If a company or a local
government switches to one of these desktops then this mostly because of the
contacts they had and primarily decisions are based on some facts. Same is
true for a single user.
So our discussions are mostly of the base. There are some aspects of
usability and coolness that users like. And some things they can not
understand. I was a bit surprised to find out that in KDE you actually have
to copy files in $HOME/.autostart to get applications started (standard
Kubuntu). There seems to be a control center plugin that we did install but
was actually not visible. I wonder if no KDE user ever wanted to have some
applications started by default. I did not find any solutions on the net.
Actually we were about to install workrave - maybe there is a simple way but
that is absolutely not intuitive nur visible. Honestly in GNOME there is a
solution but it is rather hidden as a tab in "Sessions".
On these occasions one gets the impression that users and developers
sometimes do not really communicate well. I have experienced this witht the
epiphany browser where the adblock extension was not enabled by default for
years (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D364285) . This sure meant
that you just could not use epiphany as a browser nowadays - well I could
not. I dont want to browse through all the ads. It's interesting - because I
really think that this has driven MANY users to Firefox and mabye this is
one of the reasons that even the GNOME orientated distros prefer Firefox. I
think that often its the small things that can be REALLY important for a
user. epiphany had and has some great usability pros but also still some
cons that are not resolved for years. And this is only one application.
Maybe it would be good to maintain more flavors of a desktop or application
- one which is pure and one which contains some dirty hacks but solve
problems for the user. I think that the GNOME way is better in the very long
run - but this means that one has to live with some cons for 10 years till
there is a really clean solution. And that is not acceptable, even if it
will be the better solution then.
regards,
Thilo
-- =
Thilo Pfennig
http://wiki.foresightlinux.com/confluence/display/~vinci/
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[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Calum Benson Calum.Benson at Sun.COM
Wed Feb 21 04:57:44 PST 2007
On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 20:24 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Would it be a bad idea to have a mode where you can't even do silly things
> like that by mistake? Keep the core menu entry fixed, for example? No
> doubt. When it comes to making a mess of it, my daughter is better at
> _creating_ the mess than she is at straightening the end result out.
>
> But does that mean that you shouldn't be able to configure things if you
> want? Hell no. It just means that _different_ users have different views
> of what "confusing" and "configurability" means.
GNOME has plenty of settings you can lock down to stop people getting
into a mess; if you maintain their machines, did you ever consider doing
any of this for their accounts? If not, was it lack of an obvious way
to do so (during installation or elsewhere) that prevented you from
doing so, or some other reason?
Or perhaps lockdown stuff is too fine-grained for your scenario anyway,
in which case, would something more like OSX's "parental
controls" (sucky name) be more appropriate?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/family/
Cheeri,
Calum.
--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson at sun.com GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com +353 1 819 9771
Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Linus Torvalds torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Wed Feb 21 08:10:01 PST 2007
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Calum Benson wrote:
>
> GNOME has plenty of settings you can lock down to stop people getting
> into a mess; if you maintain their machines, did you ever consider doing
> any of this for their accounts? If not, was it lack of an obvious way
> to do so (during installation or elsewhere) that prevented you from
> doing so, or some other reason?
I had (and still have) _no_ idea.
I think Gnome people have this very strange dichotomy:
- "We have tons of config options.." (it's true, sometimes, just not
where I cared)
- "..but we hide them, because only experts should use them"
and then they think that just because you're an expert in one thing, it
means that you should know *Gnome* intimately.
In past discussions, I've seen people think that since I'm a "developer",
I should use a text-editor to edit binary configuration files by hand (and
anybody who calls XML "text" has drunk a bit too much of the cool-aid).
I don't understand that. I'm a *kernel* developer. I may do *kernel*
configuration by editing text-files (and they are _real_ text files),
because I find that to be more efficient, and I know the options better
than most.
But do I think that Gnome developers should do that? Hell no. It's why
we've merged various graphical configuration utilities that have
help-buttons etc (and don't get me wrong: I don't think those are perfect
either, and we had a small flame-war about how to make it easier for
people to see dependencies between different choices just in the last
month).
This is why you want graphical tools (that are there by default, so that
you don't have to know enough even to know to get them) to configure stuff
even for "experts". Because I'm an expert Unix user, but that doesn't mean
that I'm expert in some Gnome internal configuration issues. I know what I
want, but that doesn't mean that I know how Gnome does it.
This is also why I actually made the patches to "gnome-control-center" to
expose the things I wanted in the window control panel. Not because I
personally *needed* it any more (now that I wrote the code, I know which
magic command line to use to enable it), but because I know that even I
will forget - I tend to install new machines maybe twice a year, which is
the only time I really want to configure my window manager, and that's
simply not often enough for me to have to "remember" things.
And yeah, the control-center patches actually ended up being larger than
the metacity patches (the biggest part was the Glade XML thing, btw: there
really is something seriously *wrong* with XML, but that's a whole other
discussion in itself). But _I_ believe that to make a configuration option
really "exist", you have to expose it. Not hide it away for "experts".
Linus' law (nr 76 of 271):
"Don't claim to have a config option, if you don't actually have the UI
to change it"
Because it really does boil down to the same "users are different, and do
things we don't expect". Replace "users" with "experts", and it will still
be true - perhaps even more so. Nobody is an expert on the thing _you_ are
an expert on.
> Or perhaps lockdown stuff is too fine-grained for your scenario anyway,
> in which case, would something more like OSX's "parental
> controls" (sucky name) be more appropriate?
Quite frankly, I gave my daughter as an example just of the kind of "yeah,
you can certainly do confusing things even with gnome". I don't feel like
I need to control her in this area - confusion and experimentation is how
people learn. I just realize that others may not be as happy having the
people they support experiment and screw things up.
So I don't personally think that "parental controls" are necessarily the
thing to look for, but yes, I think that kind of technology can also be
used for "limit confusion by limiting choice". Some people are just better
off not being confused.
Linus
[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME
Bryce Harrington bryce at linux-foundation.org
Thu Feb 15 11:28:18 PST 2007
On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 07:54:29AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> "ONLY being easy to use" is bad, because it means that once the initial
> learning curve is over, maybe you know the program, but you can't actually
> do what you WANT to do. And that's *bad*. That's *really* bad. It's
> actually much worse than being hard to use to begin with, in many ways.
>
> Gnome people seem to think that once you "got into it", you never want to
> do anything more. Not true.
Hi Linus,
I also have long been a fan of KDE for many years, and also for similar
reasons - I knew I had such strong opinions about how the desktop should
work, that I wouldn't be happy with a desktop that didn't have all the
customization capabilities that KDE does.
Last year my girlfriend decided to switch to Linux, and I put Ubuntu on
it. I figured she wouldn't care about customization as much as me, and
so since GNOME was the default for the install, I left it like that.
But then something odd happened - in using it, I found I actually sort
of liked it. It was different than KDE, but it was clearly well thought
out, it looked polished, and it felt quite stable. I installed it at
work, and on my laptop at home. I did find that some things were
missing that I liked with KDE, but no real showstoppers for me.
Today I have a mix of computers some with GNOME, and some with KDE. In
my view they both work just fine. I still use some KDE software like
Konqueror on the GNOME systems, and GNOME software on the KDE systems.
I should add that I do development of Gtk software (Inkscape), so
probably I should be completely biased for GNOME. But it seems to me
that judging software based on its widgetset is sort of like judging
them based on the color of their skin. At the end of the day what
matters is if the software gets the job done. For example, I often
encouraged graphics arts professionals to consider a workflow involving
both Inkscape (Gtk) for design plus Scribus (Qt) for layout. As a user,
I mostly just use screenfuls of xterms plus firefox, so the actual
desktop is just sort of background anyway.
I think most of us recognize that as open source projects, we've got
many common interests, and it is much more productive to focus on
them than our differences.
Bryce