Dolphin for Plasma Next?

[Jens Reuterberg]

Well lets start off by saying "No not really, the HIG guys do the HIG things 
we just try to simplify their workflow by making it accessible and actually 
done in the end". 
The reason why we kinda encroach on their area with layouts and such is 
because of talks I've had before starting this up with designers with a 
background in KDE. One of the many warnings was that people seemed to think 
that visuals where merely "doing pretty" and something that could be added as 
an afterthought which resulted in designers being bossed around by 20 people 
and then simply leaving. Better to have one proprietary boss than 20 open 
ones. 

So the fields blur a bit. My personal hope is that the two groups can merge in 
the future but since at the moment our work methods are so different its a tad 
tricky. So some diplomacy and respect is needed which is why we don't talk too 
much about the layout bit and try to swing everything concerning those parts 
by them since they are the experts.

Don't worry about being negative and ABSOLUTELY don't worry about being honest 
with the time you guys have (or don't) I think we can all understand that 
issue :)

But yes - there will be ALLOT of "a)'s" from us. Which is kinda as it should 
be - just don't make any promises and keep us in the loop about things and be 
honest and that's all anyone can demand. 

A majority of the issues will hopefully be part of the "will be fixed by 
theme" column - but some might not. I just want you to feel included in insane 
ideas and not get the opposite: where we work and work and then dump the work 
we have in your lap without forewarning. 

But right now Plasma NEXT is calling so ... but I still think the honorable 
thing is to warn you "we are looking hungrily at Dolphin" ;)

/Jens

OH before I forget: if you want anything email me! Just so you know I read 
everything (although its starting to cost time wise for me too) 

On Tuesday 18 February 2014 16.12.07 Frank Reininghaus wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 2014-02-18 14:45 GMT+01:00 Jens Reuterberg:
> >> Could you elaborate on what sorts of things you want to discuss? I
> >> understand that your group is working on ideas for the future look of
> >> the KDE/Plasma desktop (whatever the final name will be), including
> >> the applications. However, most of what you can see in Dolphin's UI is
> >> provided by the styles and by widgets from kdelibs (or frameworks, in
> >> the future), and I think that this should not change - consistency
> >> with other KDE applications is very important IMHO. So anything that
> >> you want to change about Dolphin's look would probably apply to other
> >> applications as well, right?
> > 
> > That is the plan - the way changes will happen is kinda in the hands of
> > the
> > Plasma Devs and not us so we want to talk to all the "basic applications
> > in
> > the desktop" people one-on-one and then sketch up ideas, get them past the
> > HIG-gang to get intput and changes and then throw it past you again.
> > 
> > The issue is that Dolphin has plenty of fiddly details that could be
> > changed to better fit the style but also the HIG guidelines
> 
> OK, thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood the point of your
> group then - I thought that the "Visual Design Group" is mostly about
> icon themes, widget styles and similar things, and not about
> usability.
> 
> If there are parts of Dolphin which are not conforming to the HIG,
> feel free to tell us about them, and we can talk about how these
> issues can be addressed. If there is a forum discussion about a
> particular HIG issue now or in the future, you can share a link on
> this mailing list to give us an opportunity to have a look and comment
> on it if appropriate.
> 
> > But there are some ideas cropping up for you guys and Kmail and other
> > "basic applications" that might be good to pass by you.
> 
> I apologize if what I'm going to say now will appear overly hesitant
> or negative, but after some rather frustrating experiences in the
> past, I think it needs to be said in order to prevent possible
> misunderstandings and maybe disappointment in the future.
> 
> There is a *huge* mismatch between what the people who work on
> Dolphin's code, in particular myself, can do, and what some others
> expect them to do. I only spend a few hours per week in front of my
> development machine, and I try to spend some minutes on answering some
> e-mails, bug reports and review requests whenever I find the time.
> Needless to say, this is barely sufficient to work on the things that
> I consider somewhat urgent, and finding the time to work on
> large-scale changes that are proposed by others is rather challenging.
> 
> I think it's cool if people discuss ideas how Dolphin can be improved,
> but I would appreciate it if they were aware of two things:
> 
> (a) Even if everyone agrees that an idea is cool, there is no
> guarantee that anyone who currently works on Dolphin will be able to
> implement it.
> 
> (b) Not every idea that looks good at first sight is suitable for
> inclusion in Dolphin. For example, a change might make life easier for
> some users, but seriously harm the usability for others. Or it would
> require that a lot of code is changed, which means that there will
> most likely be new bugs, and maybe it will make future code
> maintenance harder. It could also be that nothing can be done in
> Dolphin to change a certain behavior because a library that Dolphin
> depends on causes it.
> 
> We get a lot of ideas from users already at bugs.kde.org, and many of
> them belong to category (b). Most of the time, this is not because of
> anything related to code, but because it is obvious to someone who has
> spent a few years learning a lot about the many different ways in
> which an application is used regularly that the idea will cause
> serious trouble for many users. In the past, I have often replied to
> these ideas and pointed out why they might not be suitable for Dolphin
> because I felt that users who took the time to describe their ideas
> deserve that they get some kind of feedback. I was willing to accept
> that writing these replies is quite time-consuming and has no positive
> effect for Dolphin's users (except maybe for the user who filed the
> report). However, "Thanks for your idea, but I think that..." is
> usually not what the reporter wants to hear, and the inappropriate
> responses that came from a small subgroup of all reporters were so
> harmful for my motivation to spend any spare time on Dolphin that I
> have recently decided not to comment on such "category (b)" ideas at
> bugs.kde.org any more.
> 
> Sorry again if this sounds too negative, but I wanted to make it clear
> why I have an uneasy feeling about encouraging others to "pass ideas
> by us".
> 
> I think the best solution would be to simply send links to forum
> discussions about these ideas to this mailing list, provided the ideas
> found some support, and no obvious flaws could be found. I will try to
> provide some feedback in the forum then, and other readers of this
> list might also share their opinion. Inappropriate reactions are
> hopefully less likely in such a public place than in a wishlist report
> at bugs.kde.org (which is often a one on one conversation between the
> reporter and the maintainer or a core developer).
> 
> > The issue with a mailing list is that most of us don't use them - a
> > majority hold the fort in a google plus group and a private forum - so
> > the back and forth may be a tad trickier depending on reactions to
> > mockups.
> 
> As I said, if there is a Dolphin-specific discussion in the forum,
> feel free to share a link on this mailing list (I hope you mean the
> KDE forum and not a really "private" forum).
> 
> Thanks,
> Frank