2006/6/19, Alejandro Exojo <<a href="mailto:suy@kurly.org">suy@kurly.org</a>>:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Disclaimer: I've read your email a bit quickly, and I don't have all the time<br>of the world to reply right now, but I wanted to comment a bit. Oh, and...<br>maybe the kde-usabilty list is best suited to write about this.
</blockquote><div><br>No problem :) I'm just looking for opinions now, maybe I'll decide to write there later. <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;">
I'm sure the KDE project will always try to improve the integration of its<br>applications, but I thought that KDE was considered one of the best<br>integrated desktops. I don't know if GNOME has improved with respect this in
<br>the latest releases, but the last time I tried it, it was less integrated<br>that KDE, specially if you use OpenOffice.org and FireFox by default.</blockquote><div><br>Well, I never tried plain Gnome. I always tested modified version (first by RedHat, now by Ubuntu), but the Ubuntu one feels really awesome. I have much better experience with it, than I have with Kubuntu. (and I use Gentoo by default ;)). I don't know if it's thanks to Ubuntu guys, or Gnome did improve. It works, you see a desktop, not a set of apps.
<br>And last Monday there was a public meeting with Mark Shuttleworth and there was a question about Kubuntu. He said that he don't want to control it, he gives Kubuntu authors a lot of free space to do what they want to do, and he just hope that with time they'll achieve the same level of user experience Ubuntu gives.
<br></div><br>We can argue, we can say "he's wrong", but I simply share his (and Thom) point of view. KDE works like a set of bundled apps.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
But HOW? How can a plain text editor be similar to a CD/DVD burning<br>application?</blockquote><div><br>It doesn't have to be similar, it just should share the vision on how the DE works, and hacing separate owners who decides about everything in the UI of each app will not help here.
<br> Also, look (once more, I know) at MacOS. Watch how their text editor works.<br>I'd describe it as, in MacOS, I have a part of Desktop Environment which shows me text when I need it and allows me to read it and write.
<br>In KDE, I have a great application for reading text. KDE will even set it as a default one maybe. But it's still an external app. <br><br>I really don't know how to explain it better :)<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;">
I agree that some similar applications have chosen different<br>design decisions. For example, Juk and Amarok have the progress bar in<br>different places of the UI, but which one (if there is one at all) is<br>correct?</blockquote>
<div><br> Well, it's another problem. Serving Juk and Amarok to user by default (or Kate, Kwrite, KEdit) is a mistake. Always.<br>Look at Firefox and Thunderbird. Ignore if they're good or easy to use. But you can easly see that they play similar, if you know UI of one of them you'll use the UI of the second without a problem. They share the UI vision.
<br></div><br>And it's still different issue from the issue of having the key apps be a part of the system instead of staying as apps.<br><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
AFAIK, KDE doesn't provides a way to make this kind of progress bar the same<br>in all media/music players, but does in other aspects of the UI. I've never<br>seen a KDE application whose "Settings" menu is before "Edit", or with a
<br>dialog in which the "Cancel" button is before the "OK" one.</blockquote><div><br>That's HIG. That's great, it makes it easier for user to learn how to use the system, but it'll not solve the above problems.
<br></div><br>I know that it doesn't sound that clear. It's very hard to speak about feeling, impressions. It's much easier for me to say what I don't like any other DE. In KDE it's only about having impression that it's just a huge set of separated apps that were tied together without an intention of their authors by some meta-project maintainer.
<br><br>Greetings<br>Zbigniew Braniecki<br><div><br></div></div>