On Fri, 21 Feb 2003 09:44:50 -0600, Bret Baptist wrote:

> On Friday 21 February 2003 9:14 am, Frederic Crozat wrote:
>> >> What you are asking for is clearly based on a KDE centric point of
>> >> view..
>> >
>> > No, I think that it is based on the most customization possible point of
>> > view. The reason that it seems to be KDE centric is because it *has* the
>> > ability to be customizable.
>>
>> About customizations, I suggest you read Havoc article :
>>
>> http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html
> 
> A very good article that backs up what you have been saying in some areas and 
> supports what a few of us have been saying in others.
> 
> I quote:
> "So how is the decision [to add a preference] made? It's a judgment call. I 
> try to go through some questions like these: 
> 
>       1. Ask questions to find out what's really bugging someone who requests a 
> preference. What is the annoyance or inefficiency that prompted them to ask? 
> 
>       2. Can said annoyance be made to go away for all users without requiring a 
> preference? If so, just do that. You may have to think about the big picture 
> of the UI to figure out how to make it Just Work. 
>       
>       3. Is the annoyance or inefficiency really significant, or did it cost them 1 
> second doing something that users do once per week on average? If it's just 
> some trivial thing, then the extra feature or preference probably costs more 
> than it's worth, even if you can't make things Just Work. 
>       
>       4. Does any other OS have this feature or preference? I'm all for innovation, 
> but if no one else is doing something, you should think it through twice to 
> be sure there isn't a reason they aren't doing it. If you're appropriately 
> humble you'll probably find that a lot of thought and user testing has gone 
> into the currently popular platforms."
> 
> 
> The only question that we can't answer yes to is number 3, if it is trivial or 
> not.  I think that all the others we can say with a fair degree of certainty, 
> yes.  In the case of number 4, other OSes having this feature, I would say 
> that most of them do have the abiltity to look the same across almost all 
> apps when you change the color of the widgets.
> 
> The main reason I am pushing this is I have seen what people said about 
> Redhat's BlueCurve.  It was lambasted in some circles solely for the color 
> customization issue, I don't want the same to happen to Mandrake's Galaxy.  
> If you are going to make things look the same, then you should probably make 
> sure that they *always* look the same.  The first time Linux user who goes 
> into KControl and selects a different color scheme and finds their Gimp 
> looking very out of place is going to get a bad impression of what Linux can 
> do.  "Windows handles color changes without a problem."  The only way to 
> really "fix" the issue is to pull the color settings module from KControl, 
> not a good option at all, or make it so that the color scheme is the same 
> between GTK and QT.  Does this make any sense?  Or am I just talkin' outa my 
> ass?

I think I made my point very clear.. It is a "bug" in Kcontrol.. There is
also a project to let GTK and QT discover the color used by the other
toolkits (using XSettings)..

-- 
Frederic Crozat
MandrakeSoft


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