The stupid toolbox

[Michael Rudolph]

On Tuesday 04 March 2008 19:15:48 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 March 2008, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > On Tuesday 04 of March 2008, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 04 March 2008, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > > >  I have only one aesthetic issue with the toolbox - it is
> > > > there. Please fix that and I'm pretty sure this whole
> > > > time-wasting discussion can stop. Even
> > >
> > > ah, now we get to the hostage taking part of the conversation:
> > > "do what i say and nobody gets hurt." let's just not go there,
> > > ok?
> >
> >  Why? I didn't tell you how to do that, and this wasn't wasting
> > only your time. It took only several weeks to get you from
> > not-going-to-happen
>
> maybe i wasn't clear enough:
>
> * the toolbox will not have a "remove this toolbox" option added to
> it * containment specialization is there to provide for infinite
> flexibility
>
> nothing has changed in the plans. what has come of it is:
>
> * more people have shared their pain points (that's good)
> * people figure they understand everything that's happening and
> therefore grow needlessly concerned
> * i'm trying to figure out just how much of my time i can rationally
> spend explaining archetectural issues to people
>
> really, i just want people to have a small amount of trust here that:
>
> * we're listening to your pain points
> * we're adressing those as we can
> * we're not stupid
> * that short cut solutions are really not the answer
>
> the proof of these points are that:
>
> * pain points are being dealt with as anyone can see by tracking svn
> * when i put aside the couple of hours to explain every relevant
> archetectural issue, people go, "oooh! now i get it"
> * right now i'm dealing with yet more breakage on xinerama due to the
> "Make panels sizeable!" quickies that went in
>
> maybe i should just change my priorities from "working on code" to
> "educating the world on the architecture". and yeah, i'm serious
> about that.

Hello everyone,

great, this is already pretty close to what I imagined with my 
suggestion.

But to do even better next time around, I'd also like to give an example 
of how I imagine collaboration on the toolbox to work:
(my views, of course, are only minimally authoritative)

I don't like the toolbox very much. I think it's not very beautiful and 
I suspect it to be a rather clumsy interface to control a zooming user 
interface.

When I think about how a ZUI could work, the picture that most often 
comes to my mind is that of a map. I can zoom in and out and I can pan 
around. But instead of displaying cities, mountains and rivers, I'm 
navigating through all my projects that live as plasmoids on my map.

If this metaphor holds, then perhaps navigational controls like we know 
them from digital maps could prove useful; possibly just as an 
inspiration. I could imagine controls like we know them from google 
earth in a screen corner to allow for a more natural navigation of my 
desktop. This needs of course to be accompanied by other means of 
moving around all your projects. A textual list of all projects, for 
example (cf. task-oriented kickoff) or a visual aid like current pagers 
or gimp's navigation window.

There are certainly a couple of problems with this approach, many of 
which, I think, I have covered, others still need attending to or are 
plain unresolvable. I shall not go on, though, since this is not a 
genuine contribution, but rather intended as a template for other 
contributions.

Criticism and review is important, but it should always be in a way that 
brings the project forward. Why else should absolutely everyone be 
allowed to speak his mind about everything?
Well, actually there are reasons, but would you rather be an asylum for 
socially-challenged geeks or an asylum for socially-challenged geeks, 
that creates kick-ass software?

Well, I guess that's four cents now.

michael