Hi Aaron, thanks for the answer.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/1/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Aaron J. Seigo</b> <<a href="mailto:aseigo@kde.org">aseigo@kde.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Monday 01 May 2006 01:06, Zbigniew Braniecki wrote:<br>> Aaron stated that KDE team has prepared the full UI and feature set related<br>> documents before they started actually implementing them. That's awesome!<br>
<br>er, no. what i said is that we have an HCI working group and a technical<br>working group. that we have multiple individual projects within kde (which is<br>a meta-project) each working on these things both individually and in
<br>coordination with the project itself. that it's a work in progress and that<br>we don't have the manpower to burn carting it up into nice little packages<br>this far in advance of the release for users to ponder over.
</blockquote><div><br>Let me quote you ;)<br>"that's also why it's taken so fucking long: i started from the end user experience result and designed that first."<br><br>For me, it's obvious that you must have it somewhere. What you called "user experience result".
<br>And those docs:<br> - <a href="http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/12/kde4.html">http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/12/kde4.html</a><br> - <a href="http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/09/19/1616206.shtml?tid=130">
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/09/19/1616206.shtml?tid=130</a><br> - <a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39184118,00.htm">http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39184118,00.htm
</a><br> - <a href="http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/kde4.html">http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/kde4.html</a><br> - <a href="http://blogs.qtdeveloper.net/archives/2005/08/03/some-basic-thoughts-about-kde-4/">http://blogs.qtdeveloper.net/archives/2005/08/03/some-basic-thoughts-about-kde-4/
</a><br><br>Are just a set of whishes, people either describes what should happen with KDE4, or what technologies should be there. <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br><br>predictability of the sort you are looking for is overrated and, honestly, not<br>very useful. go look at microsoft's track record on this, and go see how<br>apple handles this.</blockquote><div><br>you're right. I rethinked this after sending my email, and I'm reverting that point from my concerns.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>hundreds of hard disks, hundreds of minds, some documents and code in svn,
<br>dozens of individual websites ... we treat development like movie studios<br>treat CGI: we pull the immense job into tiny pieces, feed those tiny pieces<br>out into the grid of computers and people we call the community, and they
<br>each work on their bit to create a final scene.</blockquote><div><br>Is there any chance to bring them into any UI design spec document? I mean, I'd like to spend some time on this if I could.<br>As you may remember I brought this list -
<a href="http://www.e-gandalf.net/wiki/index.php/KDE4_Features">http://www.e-gandalf.net/wiki/index.php/KDE4_Features</a> - to life and from my point of view, such UI specs, feature set plan is a next step. I'd like to be able to confront the set of ideas with your plan and get info which of those you are considering implementing and which you don't.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">what plans are you trying to make? if you are specific as to your needs,<br>perhaps we can give some guidance. asking for the "whole concept" is not
<br>specific enough to give anything like a meaningful answer.</blockquote><div><br>I'd like to deploy KDE4 in a two companies depending on what UI solutions it'll bring (we also consider using Xfce or KDE 3.5) - I need to put into next year's budget - it's not important, it's just an example. I believe that it's better to be open for everything beside of some cases, than being closed for everything beside of some cases.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">first off, let's be honest: users who do not get involved have never had any<br>
influence in kde in the past. if that bothers you, find comfort in the fact<br>that it bothers me too. but i can't change the past.</blockquote><div><br>Ok. <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
with kde4 we -have- gotten -amazing- amount of feedback from users; we've done<br>a -lot- of research with users (and much more is left to be done); we, the<br>project, have for the first time actually reached out to the users and it's
<br>already paying off IMHO.</blockquote><div><br>Oh, wait. Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I saw Kollaboration project, where tons of people submitted awesome ideas, features, mockups, animations, and got more and more frustrated on total lack of communication channel so they simply were on themselves - they had no way to know if their ideas are interesting for KDE leaders or not. I saw similar things on
<a href="http://kde-look.org">kde-look.org</a> and <a href="http://kde-forum.org">kde-forum.org</a> in KDE4 brainstorm channels.<br><br>So yes, you're obviously right, users gave you tremendeous feedback on KDE4. It's just that it was very one way communication.
<br>I mailed you asking about the reasons, and you said that signal/buzz ratio is too high for you to try to scan all those discussions looking for actual ideas. So, I spent some time and prepared an aggregated list of features basing on all those three sources. I asked for feedback on which of those features seems interesting for you. You didn't find time for this.
<br><br>What I still miss is the back signal. Not some interview where you'll say "KDE4 will support NMM and GStreamer and will support tons of hardware thanks to Solid" but either <br><br>a) signal to idea authors - so they can now that their idea was interesting for you
<br></div>b) signal to whole community about the feature set and what ideas you're going to implement<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
so your statement here rings a bit hollow to me.</blockquote><div><br>I'm sorry for my bad english :/ <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
and that's ok, because you don't need to make this decision today. do you like<br>kde3? yes? use it! no? use something else! when kde4 is ready, then you can<br>ask yourself the same questions about kde4.</blockquote><div>
<br>I'd say that in 60% of cases people use KDE3 because it's the best what they can get on their favorite OS but they can't wait KDE4 ;) <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
in fact, everything you could ask for right now is in svn. but it's not in<br>any shape for a release, not even a tech preview. some things take time to<br>develop. your whinging has just increased that time by sucking time out of my
<br>day and everyone else's who read this exchange.</blockquote><div><br>Thank you for your opinion. It brings my concern about your evaluation of discussion as the channel to gain knowledge vs. discussion as this stupid thing that people does instead of staying silent ;)
<br>Sorry, whineing - not discussion.<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">or maybe it's because we don't have a bunch of people sitting around with
<br>nothing better to do than gather up all the early design concepts from around<br>the project to publish these documents? perhaps it's because the current<br>design is -too early- to make such documents from.</blockquote>
<div><br>Wait. I can try to address the first point on my own. But the latter suprises me - didn't you say that you already prepared whole concept BEFORE coding? If so, how could this be to early to gather it into a spec docs?
<br><br>It still confuses me then - do you have or do you have not a front-end plan that you're implementing? Do you follow the routine of writing libs and then bulding some UI on top of this, or you first prepare the UI and then write code to implement this UI?
<br><br>If it's the latter case, how could it be to early to write specs?<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">who do you think develops kde? -the community-. read that as many times as it
<br>takes to understand it. here, let me say it again: -the community-.</blockquote><div><br>Assuming that everyone who spend his time for the project is the only who matters has much better slogan "We create software for our own" ;) Actually, the more you'll go public, the lower will be the ratio of community/users. And refusing your users and rejecting them to have their voice on what KDE4 will be makes no sense to me.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">by helping a project, you become part of the project. there is no room in open
<br>source for armchair dictators. if you have input, get involved. there is no<br>shortcut.</blockquote><div><br>I strongly disagree here. You have, you'll have and, surprise, you want to have users. Many of them. And 99% of them will never become involved into the project. But they can give you amazing ideas, solutions, share concerns, and with a very, very, very little amount of work, but from very, very, very many people, they could improve the final product in a great way.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">if they started providing input on the kde-www list, guess what? they -would-<br>
be part of the kde web dev project. surprise!</blockquote><div><br>Wait, everyone who wrote sth to the maillist is a part of the project? Everyone who wrote a post on the forum is a part of the project?<br>What about those who only commented an art on
<a href="http://dot.kde.org">dot.kde.org</a>?<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>wow. first the "you don't want to be bad people, right?" card and now the
<br>fear-of-failure card. heh. your jedi mind tricks have no effect here.</blockquote><div><br>It's sad for me that you still consider my person as someone who want to harm the project for some reason (either, by whineing, jedi mind tricking or trying to force you to do what you don't want to do)
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">now, we have a huge community of people actually involved and peer reviewing<br>
concepts, code, art and more. we have hundreds and hundreds of people taking<br>time out of their lives to do exactly what you suggest. if you aren't<br>managing it, perhaps you should reflect on why you can't and others can
<br>rather than trying to figure out how the world around you is letting you down<br>(hint: it isn't)</blockquote><div><br>Assuming that the reason I'm writing to you is because I have a problem, and suggesting me to figure out my problem is the best way not to have any feedback beside of the precizely requested one. Which is probably not what you'd like to have.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">thanks for pointing to single applications; amazingly vague wiki pages.</blockquote>
<div><br>Vague? Jaw on the floor.<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> while<br>interesting reading, you're comparing apples to oranges.
</blockquote><div><br>Ok, so - could you point me out the docs on which I could base preparing oranges for KDE4 project? The pieces of public docs which gathered together would be able to answer questions - what KDE4 will be for the user? How it will looks like? How will the UI work?
<br><br>If you don't think it's important, and think that the fact that all Appeal, Plasma, and KDE wikis have 2 or 3 edits per month, and this maillist has 2 or 3 edits per month, is what should happen, I promise not to disturb your silence anymore.
<br><br>Greetings<br>Zbigniew Braniecki<br></div></div>