[Panel-devel] Coherency issue

[Zbigniew Braniecki]

2006/6/19, Alejandro Exojo <suy at kurly.org>:
>
> Disclaimer: I've read your email a bit quickly, and I don't have all the
> time
> of the world to reply right now, but I wanted to comment a bit. Oh, and...
> maybe the kde-usabilty list is best suited to write about this.


No problem :) I'm  just looking for opinions now, maybe I'll decide to write
there later.

I'm sure the KDE project will always try to improve the integration of its
> applications, but I thought that KDE was considered one of the best
> integrated desktops. I don't know if GNOME has improved with respect this
> in
> the latest releases, but the last time I tried it, it was less integrated
> that KDE, specially if you use OpenOffice.org and FireFox by default.


Well, I never tried plain Gnome. I always tested modified version (first by
RedHat, now by Ubuntu), but the Ubuntu one feels really awesome. I have much
better experience with it, than I have with Kubuntu. (and I use Gentoo by
default ;)). I don't know if it's thanks to Ubuntu guys, or Gnome did
improve. It works, you see a desktop, not a set of apps.
And last Monday there was a public meeting with Mark Shuttleworth and there
was a question about Kubuntu. He said that he don't want to control it, he
gives Kubuntu authors a lot of free space to do what they want to do, and he
just hope that with time they'll achieve the same level of user experience
Ubuntu gives.

We can argue, we can say "he's wrong", but I simply share his (and Thom)
point of view. KDE works like a set of bundled apps.

But HOW? How can a plain text editor be similar to a CD/DVD burning
> application?


It doesn't have to be similar, it just should share the vision on how the DE
works, and hacing separate owners who decides about everything in the UI of
each app will not help here.
 Also, look (once more, I know) at MacOS. Watch how their text editor works.
I'd describe it as, in MacOS, I have a part of Desktop Environment which
shows me text when I need it and allows me to read it and write.
In KDE, I have a great application for reading text. KDE will even set it as
a default one maybe. But it's still an external app.

I really don't know how to explain it better :)

I agree that some similar applications have chosen different
> design decisions. For example, Juk and Amarok have the progress bar in
> different places of the UI, but which one (if there is one at all) is
> correct?


 Well, it's another problem. Serving Juk and Amarok to user by default (or
Kate, Kwrite, KEdit) is a mistake. Always.
Look at Firefox and Thunderbird. Ignore if they're good or easy to use. But
you can easly see that they play similar, if you know UI of one of them
you'll use the UI of the second without a problem. They share the UI vision.

And it's still different issue from the issue of having the key apps be a
part of the system instead of staying as apps.


AFAIK, KDE doesn't provides a way to make this kind of progress bar the same
> in all media/music players, but does in other aspects of the UI. I've
> never
> seen a KDE application whose "Settings" menu is before "Edit", or with a
> dialog in which the "Cancel" button is before the "OK" one.


That's HIG. That's great, it makes it easier for user to learn how to use
the system, but it'll not solve the above problems.

I know that it doesn't sound that clear. It's very hard to speak about
feeling, impressions. It's much easier for me to say what I don't like any
other DE. In KDE it's only about having impression that it's just a huge set
of separated apps that were tied together without an intention of their
authors by some meta-project maintainer.

Greetings
Zbigniew Braniecki
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