Shipping a cursor theme with KDE

[Riccardo Iaconelli]

On Wednesday 26 December 2007 17:22:51 Dan Meltzer wrote:
> As discussed recently on irc, I feel like it is far too late in the
> release process to even considder committing something like this.  We
> are ten days before a release, adding something this noticible to the
> user with very few opportunities for them to provide feedback is very
> irresonsible.  This should wait for 4.1 to allow for more testing and
> feedback before a release.

As discussed recently on IRC, I repeat me once more stating that not including 
something that might really improve the user experience with no drawbacks of 
any kind is rather unwise. Deadlines are put there to stabilize the software, 
not to block any kind of development.

Besides, as it has been mentioned on numerous occasions that the 
so-called “freeze” does not affect artwork.

With this logic, you shouldn't even be able to commit new icons, just because 
they might not look as good as the other ones, or some user might complain.

Come on, let's get reasonable. The theme has been showcased on my blog and 
received quite a lot of positive user feedback. Additionally, the KDE artists 
as well as KDE accessibility experts, who no doubt are well versed in this 
topic, have evaluated the theme, and found it very good in terms of artwork, 
and usability. To quote Pinheiro, for example, he thinks that "they are very 
good, clean and refreshing", and that "this one is stilish yet clean". On the 
other hand, he didn't like the previous version, which we've been refining 
toghether. They were too intrusive, and might have resulted in being boring 
long run.

Others may not even have been able to seen it yet (because the final design 
has been finalized this month), even though the theme itself has always been 
developed publicly. And we've especially designed it to be perfectly suitable 
for long term usage, sometimes even sacrificing some beauty.

Now, why the user shouldn't get these goodies? Sure, someone might not like 
it, but I just want to point out that the perfect artwork simply does not 
exist. Our effort of not boring users with something that cannot be seen for 
more than a couple of months is also the reason about why we're shipping a 
white cursor theme, instead of something shinier (and trust me, something 
shinier exists, check the other colors).

Not everyone will like it, I'm sure of that. Someone might also think that 
Oxygen icons are shit. So be it, they are free to choose another theme. We're 
not forcing anyone. It's just something that improves the overall user 
experience with no drawbacks of any kind!

Deadlines are a good thing, and I respect them, I think that they're very 
useful, and that asking for exceptions is not something we should do.

But the point is, I'm not asking for one! This is artwork! It doesn't 
introduce any kind of regressions, it cannot harm at all! What could go 
wrong? Stabilizing (and translating) is the whole point of deadlines, please 
don't forget it.


Bye,
-Riccardo
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