[Linuxtrent] Linus: do not use GNOME
- From: Luca Manganelli <luca76@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: linuxtrent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:39:31 +0100
No. I've talked to people, and often your "fixes" are actually removing
capabilities that you had, because they were "too confusing to the user".
That's _not_ like any other open source project I know about. Gnome seems
to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not
doign something is not "it's too complicated to do", but "it would confuse
users".
The current example of "intentionally not listed in the printing dialog,
the usability team of GNOME was against listing these options." is clearly
not the exception, but the rule.
Jeff, if the explanation had been "exposing PPD features is too hard, we
need developer manpower", I'd have understood. THAT is what open source
projects tend to say. Not "powerful interfaces might confuse users and not
look nice".
If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times.
And only ever from Gnome.
The reason I don't use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of
is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different
mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor
users? Here's a hint: it's not the small and fast one.
And when I tell people that, they tend to nod, and have some story of
their own why they had a feature they used to use, but it was removed
because it might have been confusing.
Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users
just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection
thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00022.html
--
"An algorithm must be seen to be believed."
-- Donald Knuth, in "Fundamental Algorithms"
http://www.trapanator.com/blog
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