A look at GNOME 2.14, comparison to KDE

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 12:06, Janne Ojaniemi wrote:
> But couldn't the same functionality be achieved without those frames

of course. however, it is not as easy as some tend to think to fix due to the 
added complexity of the code. sometimes it's not even possible to get it 
right without rather large changes. and that was my point: it's not fast 
work, it's not easy work, it's not fun work and it's almost always thankless 
at the end. the rather flippant "change these 10 things to make it not 
crappy!" lists really get tiring after a while; esp after i've seen that list 
100 times already.

> that frame the content-area. Since the background of the content-area and
> the background of the window are different color (by default at least), you
> have the differentiation right there, without having to use grey lines.

... and test with different colour schemes and widget styles.

> I think that all else being equal, an app that looks good is 
> inherintly more usable than an app that doesn't look good.

well, it may be more pleasant to use. not always the same thing as "more 
usable"; it can certainly help win over users though, and make using the 
software more enjoyable.

> of "usability" or "cleanliness". I maintain that we CAN have a featurefull
> and useful apps that look smooth, clean and gorgerous. It can be done.

i agree. unfortunately the chances of it being accomplished fully are 
diminished by the number of people who talk but can't/won't/don't actually 
help write the fixes. this is the biggest conundrum.

> > see ... if you feel that kde is resistant to "let's fix the interfaces"
> > i'd like to know what communicates that and then hopefully fix it. it may
> > be a real, valid issue within the project, if may be a matter of public
> > perception, it may be a problem in communication, it may be that we don't
> > have a properly visible means to bring in these contributions. i could
> > guess, but only you know this answer when it comes to you and your
> > statement above.
>
> I'm afraid that it's nothing really tangible that I could point with my
> finger and say "it's this thing here". It just seems to me that KDE is
> somewhat conservative when it comes to design-changes. 

mostly due to manpower. we generally spend a lot of effort bringing something 
functional to the table and that has traditionally left very few hours for 
working on the interfaces. more people working on that would help immensely.

> KDE and some KDE-apps have a tendency to feel like they were.... 
> designed by a committee

this is a problem of success: as the project has grown larger, our control 
through maintainership hasn't tightened to help shape the growing tide of 
contributions.

> feature in there. Everyone is afraid to remove anything, because someone
> put that particular feature there, and people are afraid that they might
> feel hurt if "their" feature was removed. 

at least for me, it has little to do with being afraid of hurting the author's 
feelings. my biggest problem is how many people bitch about every fucking 
change. i am personally fed up with that particular class of ingrates who 
employ "scream, cry and whine" reaction to changes, doubly so when they are 
users who contribute exactly 0 back and within a month or two are just fine 
with the change.

it wouldn't take so much bravery if people didn't bitch and moan over every 
attempted change. worst is when their pointless bitching is ignored, they 
turn around accuse us of "not listening to users". it wouldn't take so much 
bravery if more people were making changes and proving it could be done. it 
wouldn't take so much bravery if more people spent real coding hours on these 
issues with each other so it wasn't such a lone-wolf task.

ask the people who look after things like capitalization standards or any of 
the other similar issues. it's really pathetic. for every one person fixing 
things, we have 100 talking about fixing them and 1000 bitching about how 
they aren't fixed they way they want.

i still get emails and comments on my blog about icon zooming in the panel.

no wonder so many people stop trying to change things: there is a real 
cultural problem amongst the hard core userbase. we've been working hard to 
fix cultural issues within the project, it'd be nice to see a similar effort 
from the users closest to the project as well. there is a reason other 
projects have just stopped listening altogether and decided to make every 
decision and centrally made policy decision, users be damned.

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

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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