D23415: Improve comprehensibility and consistency of window placement mode names

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham added a comment.


  In D23415#521038 <https://phabricator.kde.org/D23415#521038>, @zzag wrote:
  
  > My problem is that VDG goes way overboard with user-visible strings. For example, we didn't receive any complaints about "Desktop Effects" string. Linux community settled on using that term so why do we have change it? Just to show "hey we are different!"? Same with the smart placement. I know that it received some complaints about the underlying algorithm, but not the name.
  
  
  Martin F once gave me a very valuable piece of advice: stay within your area of expertise. This was in response to me going overboard with proposed technical changes to KWin, and it was a valid criticism. I'm not a domain expert in KWin's internals, and accordingly, I no longer propose implementation details for KWin; I leave that up to you and other #KWin <https://phabricator.kde.org/tag/kwin/> people. You're the experts. Once you and @davidedmundson agree on whether or not I should rename just the enums, I'll do whatever you two collectively decide.
  
  What I am asking is for you to show me and the VDG the same courtesy when it comes to UI stuff. Trust that we're the domain experts for that, the way we trust that you're the domain experts for the technical implementation. VDG's initiatives have been //extraordinarily// well received among our userbase. I can't tell you how many times in the past year I have read or been told personally, "KDE is so much more polished and user-friendly then it was the last time I tried it". So I do not share your perception that VDG is an out-of-control freight train. it's true what we don't always get everything right, and you shouldn't let us run roughshod especially when the proposed implementation is wrong. But please do give us the benefit of the doubt. KDE's users are happy with the VDG.
  
  Every other KDE project pays the VDG this courtesy--except KWin. Only in KWin do patches like this become agonizing fights that make everybody feel disrespected and exhausted. Other KDE projects look at something 20 years old as automatically suspect because it's likely missed out on two decades of improved technology and user interface polishing. Only in KWin is this inverted and the 20-year old thing is to be defended, with any change considered high risk. I can understand that attitude when you're talking about working code whose reliability is paramount, but this is a user-facing string that practically nobody has even read, and of the ones who did, none of them figured what it meant just by reading it because its name conveys no meaning. Speaking personally, this conservative attitude makes contributing to KWin intensely frustrating. I feel like I'm back in the corporate world, where every change is scary and must be justified to a committee, and any mistake gets punished. That's not how the FOSS world should be. And in general, it isn't that way for other KDE projects--just KWin.
  
  > Another my problem with you VDG, which is unrelated to the change itself, is that you act a bit aggressively in code reviews. It's totally fine to have some discussion in order to change mind of code reviewers in your favor, but if you get "no" many times and the reason why maybe it's time to stop arguing. Currently I see VDG as a moving train that crashes everything in front of it.
  
  I see 3 VDG people (@ngraham, @filipf, and @ndavis) and one KWin person (@romangg) saying yes on renaming "Smart", and 2 KWin people (@zzag and @davidedmundson) saying no. This doesn't seem like it's a settled matter to me. And I believe I have responded to all the outstanding arguments against renaming "Smart":
  
  - "It's been this way for 20 years and nobody has complained" **->** "it's been a bad string for 20 years, and things that are bad should be improved, regardless of how long they've been bad for"
  - "It indicates "unless you want something special, you want this one", which the new string doesn't do." **->** "this is indicated by the fast that it's the default option"
  
  So from my perspective, I'm still waiting for rebuttals, and if there are none, then that means there are no remaining legitimate objections. I understand that having these kind of back-and-forth arguments is exhausting, especially once it's gone on for days and we're all feeling defensive. But how else are we supposed to debate something controversial? If there is a better way, I'm all ears. But until then, if you're out of rebuttals, maybe that means that renaming "Smart" isn't such a bad idea after all.

REPOSITORY
  R108 KWin

REVISION DETAIL
  https://phabricator.kde.org/D23415

To: ngraham, #kwin, #vdg, ndavis, filipf, zzag
Cc: davidedmundson, romangg, cfeck, filipf, zzag, ndavis, kwin, kde-doc-english, LeGast00n, The-Feren-OS-Dev, sbergeron, jraleigh, gennad, fbampaloukas, GB_2, mkulinski, ragreen, jackyalcine, Pitel, iodelay, crozbo, bwowk, ZrenBot, ngraham, alexeymin, skadinna, himcesjf, lesliezhai, ali-mohamed, hardening, jensreuterberg, abetts, sebas, apol, mart
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