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List:       kde
Subject:    Re: KDE-award?
From:       Jens Benecke <jens () pinguin ! conetix ! de>
Date:       1999-07-05 18:14:06
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On Thu, Jul 01, 1999 at 10:21:57AM +0200, Adolf Koenig wrote:
> 
> I agree that KDE-applications to a certain extent should follow the
> guidelines for kde-apps.
> But please think one minute about the following story:
> Imagine you are going along the street and on the corner everyday you
> meet a beggar. Every now and then you give him a dollar and you feel good
> and he seems pleased too.  But one day he complains: Why don't you give
> me a dollar everyday, and besides that, one dollar is not enough. Give me
> two.
> How long will you continue to give him money?

I think this one compares a little badly. Imagine, however that one day you
see an advertisement in a shop saying "Everyone who donates TWO dollars to
beggars will receive a free gift!" Will you continue giving one dollar? Or
will you want the gift?

> while now I see that some people want things they could easily do
> themselves within a minute, if they would use the power of Unix. But they
> want it with a click on a button, which means that somebody else should

Sure. Think about it like this: It is much more economical if _one_ person
invests 10 hours of time in writing a GUI for his program, than 10.000
people needing  one hour to understand the command line parameters.

Of course, I don't want to push anybody, and I really appreciate good
terminal applications! This is not a flamebait! I would think that someone
who does not WANT to write a GUI for his program should very well get paid
for it. I for one would have paid a registration fee for KDE if there was
one ;-) (provided nothing else changed - i.e. source code availability etc)

> put in a lot of work and waste his time just for nothing. I think time is
> better used in programming new functions than programming new buttons.
> If you want to play with buttons, why don't you buy a nintendo?

Because even _serious_ work is sometimes better/easier done with buttons
than with a terminal. Only sometimes, right. But sometimes is enough.

I bet a right-click is quicker than e.g. opening an xterm and typing 'eject
/dev/cdrom'. :)

> Therefore I would like to encourage all app-developers, not to care too
> much about guidelines. One part of them is surely necessary to guarantee
> the cooperation of the different programs in KDE. These should be
> observed to enable the functionality. But in general guidelines should be
> used as a help and not as regulations.  

They should be used as _guidelines_. That's what they are. And if you want
a consistent interface, then you HAVE to comply to guidelines, that's what
they're for.

Of course, you can still write GUI apps that don't conform to any standard,
in X, program Xlib directly, if you want. But that's not the ideal way,
because many things will be done for you if you use a certain class
library. (e.g. drag&drop compatibility, sessions, etc).

And one of the goals of KDE _is_ to provide a consistent interface. So we
need guidelines, and we need people to pay attention to them. This is not a
must, under linux anyone can do what he/she wants. But it is a viable
option to avoid a mass of incompatible-to-use incompatible-with-each-other
incompatible-with-this-or-that-library apps that need hours of time to
understand before getting productive.

Mind you, I'm not talking about command line apps


-- 
_ciao, Jens_______________________________ http://www.pinguin.conetix.de

Anyone comfortable with using Linux shall use it. | "I'm afraid Linux has a 
Anyone wanting to tell other people what they     |  year-429496 problem"
should be using can go work for Microsoft.        |  -- Kernel mailing list

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