KDE Usability Improvements

[Carlos Leonhard Woelz]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:53:27 -0700, "James Richard Tyrer"
<tyrerj at acm.org> said:
> Carlos Leonhard Woelz wrote:
> 
> Wouldn't it be better if developers followed the guidelines?
> 

Conformance is part of the work. It is a bug like any other. Please note
that you are part of the solution.

There are many, many tasks that are *hard work*, and not a lot of
hacking fun. These tasks include: writing documentation, writing
whatsthis, performing conformance tests, checking the app for ui /
guidelines conformance, managing bugs, doing KDE sysadmin work, doing
KDE webmaster work. Do we *require* people to perform these tasks, so
they can have the hacking fun? Its their free time, they can do whatever
they want with their time. Beauty of open / free software is that you
can start where other people stoped and make it better. You will be
saving "coders" time, and that is one of the goals of the quality
project: increase the base of contributors.

The correct way to solve this? Either with patches or detailed reports.
You can see that it is one of the usability tasks very few people want
to perform:

http://quality.kde.org/develop/howto/howtoui.php#uianalysis

James, I won't argue this anymore. Now you need to put your work where
your mouth is. Maybe we can even work together.

> > <snip>
> > 
> >> http://home.earthlink.net/~tyrerj/kde/Improvements00.tar.bz2
> >> 
> > Are you asking for a review for this patch?
> 
> That would be OK, although my intent was just to show that I had the 
> patch.  Actually, I would appreciate it if people would review the
> patches.

That's the spirit.
 
> > If yes, you are in the right list. Otherwise, file a bug report. 
> > Let's see what happens.
> > 
> If needed, I will split up the patches and file bug reports.
> > 
> I have already filed one bug report:
> 
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104114
> 
> And, I attached a patch to: "kdelibs/kdeui/kstdaction_p.h"
> 
> to the report.  So, it was a bug that was already fixed.
> 
> The first thing that happened was the it was reassigned to KDE Artists. 
>   I hope that that was just an honest mistake.

I think this is a kde-artist related bug, and I added additional
comments to the bug report to explain why.

> Perhaps there is a better way to submit such patches than to file a bug 
> report.  Should I split it up and send the relevant parts to the 5 
> maintainers?  Or, is there a Suggestion Box for such patches?

I can't think of a better way to send patches than a bug report, as they
don't get lost. But if you want review and advice, fill the report *and*
post to the correct mailing list, asking for advice and review :)
 
> > If you can't code, write detailed bug reports, usability reports, 
> > mockups, docs, whatever. In my experience, this *works*. Well, at 
> > least most of the time.
> > 
> Perhaps you have not had the experience of a 'Developer' responding to 
> your suggestion by asking you to submit your patch. 

Yes, I have. It did not offend me.

> To me, this is a 
> really lame excuse.  So, now with patches in hand, I will have to see if 
> they come up with some other lame excuses. :-)

You still don't get it James. If you think people will react imediatly
to the things you point out, you better give up. They say "send a patch"
and that means "this is not my priority right now, if you want to fix it
do it yourself". They have every right to do it. So it is not a "lame
excuse". Please, please try to grok this concept. If you don't, you will
keep taking other people's inaction as a personal offence.

> >> I also note that I feel that the example work that I have done is 
> >> something that is currently very important to the KDE project. 
> >> There are a lot of similar small issues that need to be fixed. This
> >>  will, despite what some coders think, greatly improve the project.
> >>  Doing a lot of small improvements has a cumulative effect.
> > 
> > I completely agree. There are tons of these small issues in KDE. But
> >  you must have the nerve to accept refusals, to argue your point, and
> >  to modify your contributions following the maintainers feedback.
> 
> Perhaps you can help get this started as an organized project.

What do you mean as an organized project?

Cheers,

Carlos Woelz
-- 
  Carlos Leonhard Woelz
  carloswoelz at imap-mail.com