[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
it's not what you are saying - it's how you are saying that. it would have been enough to say that you personally have no need for position remembering. trying to fight against a feature in every thread seems... slightly exaggerated.
it's also the same with all flames that you have been involved concerning msoffice. it is necessary to look at competition to see areas where one might improve - but it's again _how_ you do that.
most participants on this list have done something for the good of oo.org and it probably is somewhat in their subconsciousness as a child :)
so any criticism must be worded to avoid insults as possible.
"remember last editing position" is a really neat feature and i just love it. so do some other people. if you see no need for it - why are you just dying to see it removed (it's very different from implementation from the scratch) completely ?
I'm not dying to see it removed. In the thread, if you'll look, I simply said that *I* have no use for it. I also said I doubt it will be "fixed" because it wasn't a mistake or a bug to remove it. I doubt very highly that they programmers somehow "slipped up" and removed all the code relating to that particular "feature". It was a choice. Someone, somewhere, and some point made a *choice* to remove that feature. I doubt that person/group/company is going to pull a 180 on that choice because of 3 or 4 people complaining about it.
Now, about the URL bar - it's still possible, (from what has been said in this list - I don't care to check on it, because I don't want to ever put it back) to put it back. But it was ugly, a "real estate" hog, and really served no purpose to most people. I'm glad it's gone. It helped to "clean up the UI" which is why I talked about that here. Peter asked me a question, and I answered it. It was no vendeta against the URL bar that lead me to just start spouting off at it. I was responding to a direct question with a direct answer.
As far as my apparent joy in seeing features removed, it is because I, too, wish to see OOo succeed. Ian has often (very often, oh my starry skies, how very often!) complained, harped on, bemoaned the lack of "elegant" code design in general, and usually with regards to operating systems and/or office suites. Removing little-used, confusing, pointless, ugly "features" is one way to clean up the code. It's called bloat, Rich. And removing it is a Good Thing (tm).
Cleaning up the code is one thing, cleaning up the user interface is another. I care much more about cleaning up the user interface than the code, because my computer can handle a couple extra kilobytes of code here and there. 100 GB is plenty of room for programs. I've even got a 250 GB HD I haven't plugged in yet. The point is, I want the UI to be good, and if that means adding code, fine - if it means taking code away - fine. Removing checkboxes, menu options, and icons that are unused is a Good Thing (tm).
It's just like the whole "Export" and "Export to PDF" thing. What's up with that? They both do the same thing, and *ONLY* the same thing. I'm not on a computer with OOo right now, and I haven't checked, has that been cleared up in 2.0? If not, I'm filing a IZ, or voting for one.
If cleaning up the user interface means its harder for *me personally* to do the things I like to do with OOo, or maybe even impossible - so be it. As long as it does the most good for the most people.
You may not like the way I say things - and I'm sorry if you don't. I do over emphasize my points sometimes, but that's usually to drive home a point. In this case the point is, too many options is a very, very Bad Thing (tm). It's bloat. It's poor design. It's very MS-like.
Look at Firefox. The menu choices and the dialog boxes are a lot *LESS* than Mozilla. And it is a ton more popular, and can do many times even *more* things than Mozilla Navigator! It is just an effective use of User Interface Design. They *removed features* they *removed options* and it *RESTARTED THE BROWSER WARS*! Neither Netscape nor IE had come out with a new browser in years... Now both are working on next gen browsers. All because Mozilla decided to revamp their UI.
Removing features, removing options, removing choices - when done well, they are a very Good Thing (tm). I suggest googling the mailing list for the phrase "too many choices". I've posted a link to a study where Psychologists found that giving people too many choices is a bad thing. It leads to confusion, bewilderment, and people give up. The answer isn't burying options - it's removing them. We could give people an option to change the color of each half of each letter of their text - with 24 bit options for each color.... But that would be too much of a choice. Even graphics programs that allow such fine-tuned controls default to a pallete of much fewer choices (like maybe 24 colors or 36) - and then you can fine-tune it from there if you wish. Too many options is bad, and should be avoided.
So, if I seem to be an advocate of removing choices - you're darn right I am! I say make it as simple as possible. K. I. S. S.!
-Chad Smith
