On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 03:50:58PM -0800, Bob Miller wrote: > > > You say that like it's a bad thing. Why exactly did you buy a Mac, > > > again? > > > > Several reasons (why I bought my Powerbook): > > Thank you for the detailed answer. But I asked the question wrong. > Sorry. Let me try again, hopefully more clearly and with less > sarcasm. > > How can you complain about new GNOME releases reducing UI > configurability when you prefer MacOS, the poster child for > one-size-fits-all UI?
You haven't used MacOS X much? ;) The modern mac is essentially (and most would say effectively) suffers from multiple personality disorder. One one hand you have a Mac which works the way a mac should work, dating back to a 1985 philosophy of keeping everything blissfully simple for idiots who can't handle anything complex or technical. This is what Havoc is trying to create with new versions of Gnome, but it doesn't quite work all that well. The extreme example of this idiotproofing on the mac are the iLife apps. Most of these are "metal" apps with brushed metal windows, big plastic-looking buttons, and are designed as some kind of fusion between an appliance and a program. They make it easy to do relatively complex things, but are not what we'd call designed for the advanced user. No complex settings or knobs to tweak. Pro apps have TONS of knobs to do everything you ever wanted to do, and many things you would never expect to do. Ever. They vary in how much direct control you have over the system, but still they are largely one size fits all approaches. Just that the one size is bigger than most people know what to do with. Many of these (all of them from Apple) use a "Pro" widget set thatis designed to be very small and unobtrusive so that all of the features and controls will fit into the available space. Adaptive GUI elements are also becoming much more popular. For example, the system font selector window can be left open as a palette and will show as many settings or as few as you make room for. Others adaptive interface programs include additional elements which are hidden unless you ask for them to be shown, allowing great simplicity or great complexity. This type of software (be it applcation, applet, or system service) are described as "a few sizes should fit most everyone." The UNIX personality is the one that you wouldn't think fits in very well. Terminals sound like they should be out of place, but they are no more so than they were under NeXT. These days you also get an X server, so you can run many X11 programs with little difference over how they work on the average Linux box, including both Gnome and KDE (these run better if X11 does have a root window, which is an option.. Get a 3 button mouse for X11 or you'll be sorry.) Those who do not understand the UNIX personality much (and there are many in the mac world who don't) still find themselves learning just a bit about it because this is where you break the one-size-fits-all aspect of ... the other three personalities. =) Most of these programs include features which are not in the GUI, even after you customize all of your toolbars and enable all of the available plugins. In order to set, change, or enable these features, you'll usually need to use the defaults command or edit the plist files. (NeXTisms both, though the plist files are XML these days..) Plist, resource, and nib hacking are the normal way to do things in NeXT that the app author never intended for the average person to do, and they work quite well. > (Does Apple even ship two button mice yet?) No, but the OS is designed throughout to use one if you have it. In fact, Panther provides good things to do with up to five mouse buttons if you've got them. More than five and you'll have to figure out for yourself what to do with the rest. > > 2. The need to not need to fix something every time I have a paper, > > project, midterm, or other high-stress school thing pending in order to > > complete that thing. (OOo and, under Gentoo, ghostscript were common > > culprits, though portions of Gnome were also a factor..) > > I could have helped you solve that problem. You identified it > precisely, right down to the file and line, in this email. Actually, I went ~x86 in order to try and solve that problem. It had mixed results (solved some, created others..) I mostly stopped updating anything that didn't need to be updated to fix a problem or security hole. _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
