The stupid toolbox

[Jason Stubbs]

On Wednesday 05 March 2008 04:36:30 JST, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> an example from the kickoff thread was the "people might get confused and
> not get that the icon is associated with the entry" claim. holy not based
> in reality, batman!

This is (was?) based in reality. While I didn't respond to that thread, I have 
said in the past that I didn't like the highlighting. The reason I gave was 
that it wasn't immediately obvious whether an item had a submenu or not. I 
sub-consciously got into the habit of ascertaining a submenu by reading the 
title. Then one day (re-)noticed the arrows and realized that I had somehow 
slipped into perceiving them as part of the menu background.

Having said that, I don't see any real usability issues with the toolbox 
although I do agree that it can be distracting.

> i'm really tired of people trying to manipulate their preferences into the
> code by arguing via excuses that actually aren't reflective of their real
> agenda.
>
> when that happens, i'm left in a no-win:
>
> * i can ignore the point (and get called out for not listening)
> * i can address the point (and get caught in useless, though sometimes
> interesting, discussion)
> * i can point out that the point is irrelevant (and get called out for
> being dismissive)

This viewpoint is the main reason why I haven't done anything in the last 
couple of months. I got the feeling that discussion is futile on just about 
any point. Of your three options above, I'd suggest taking number two but 
without starting with the presumption that the discussion will be useless.

> i get the feeling that everyone feels very entitled to have their own pet
> idea thrown into svn on a whim and start demonstrating really awkward
> behaviour when they are denied the pleasure of dumping randomly into svn.
> that's not even a luxury i afford myself. it's not a pattern of behaviour
> that KDE endures anywhere else in our repository.
>
> can you imagine the horror if i had just committed the window border button
> ordering to kwin as i proposed? Lubos would've likely been a little pissed
> and with good reason. i don't really like the end result, but i respect
> that there's a lot of subjectivity to the issue and that kwin is Lubos'
> responsibility, not mine, and that he probably understands the issues there
> with a great level of refinement than i could.
>
> that's our (KDE's) level of expectation with projects that aren't plasma. i
> get the fact that the desktop shell is a visible and even central tool. but
> so it dolphin, konqueror, system settings, kwin, etc. i really don't felt
> like plasma gets to play by the same rules as most other software projects
> in KDE.

All of the above is valid from where I stand.

[...]

> > I want all of the KDE community
> > to be able to contribute to Plasma's look and feel without being put down
> > in this way.
>
> i'd like to not have to deal with no-win situations. so how do we meet
> those two desires? i'm all ears and would really, really like a path to
> solution.

It's not an issue for applets as there's always playground for that. The main 
confusion is about libplasma and plasmaapp. There's no clear rules on what 
can be done by who and when. So all that we (lowly devs) can do is follow 
your lead - which seems to be to commit away if you're confident in what 
you're committing.

There's the review board now, but it's also unclear when it should and 
shouldn't be used. Perhaps it would be better if everyone used it for 
everything until that distinction can be made? That would at least give 
people a chance to question you on changes that you view as trivial and might 
allow less insightful people to better understand your decisions...

[Snipping the rest of the thread as there's too much negativity for any reply 
of mine to not appear as either trolling or ass-kissing]

-- 
Jason Stubbs