KAssistantDialog proposal

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 25 August 2006 4:54, Matthias Lechner wrote:
> although I have some concerns about... I also appreciate Aaron's comments.
> Most of them mean just minor changes.

yes, hope you don't mind me picking through things with a fine tooth comb. 
it's how we make code better ... just look at the messages on my recent 
clearable lineedit improvement with people even picking out 
individual "should be const" methods ;) it's how kde gets good code. peer 
review. yum.

> Comments on the second point:
> The question which arises here is whether I should continue developing this
> component when there are so many fundamental design issues.

i don't think there are so many ... even if there were, everything is fixable.

> I designed the 
> KAssistantDialog with the end user in mind. I don't think that the end user
> should be exposed to any kind of hierarchy. And in my opinion designing
> pages hierarchically in the background and showing the user a flatten view
> is a good thing.

i don't think the problem is showing a flat view. i think the problem is 
having coders construct trees. it's probably not necessary for the (coding) 
use cases involved. can we simply get rid of the "construct trees" thing?

> Actually I really don't understand why my proposal makes things
> complicated.

it's complicated from the app developer's POV.

remember that when designing a UI class in a library that you have two sets of 
users:

end users who see the UI
coders to see the API

just as the UI needs to be usable for users, the API needs to be usable for 
developers. this way people -enjoy- writing code with your classes and find 
themselves more productive. this means coders will actually use it and 
therefor users will get to enjoy your UI =)

> Well, actually it's not my decision whether I should continue. Please tell
> me! However, I want to be sure not to waste time.

i vote "continue on" ... things take a rev or two =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
Undulate Your Wantonness
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/attachments/20060825/364b97fe/attachment.sig>