On 15 Oct 2013, at 13:29, Esteban Lorenzano <[email protected]> wrote:
> well... fonts and UX in general are two different (yet related) issues. > > UX is a huge an complicated task, and has to be taken very seriously if we > want to succeed. To allow the appropriate/productive/happy flows in an > environment requires a lot of effort and to put all the pieces together. > Yes, I know, that sounds so general that is like not saying anything :) > Here is the concrete: Put all the UX pieces together requires a lot of effort > usually not taken into account. That's how the UX evolved more or less the > same way as morphic: a patch over a patch without much thinking about the > issue, just takign what is there and parching/extending as needed. As > morphic, the current UX in pharo is broken: there is no coherence between > tools and sometimes even inside the same tool (for example nautilus has > different behavior inside the code panel than in the list panels on top). > This is not the fault of any tool, just a consequence of how evolution was > managed until now. > So, we wanted a better UX for Pharo3 that included: a new Theme, new Icon > set, and new tools that worked well together. But task demonstrated to be a > hard to beat beast, and we just moved forward in small areas (there is for > example a new centralized menu coming along with a new spotlight). > And there is a prototype of a new theme and also some icons that where > thought specially and that will fit nicely. But they will not be ready this > year and after thinking a while (and getting feedback of people in > community), we decided, for Pharo3: > > - adopt the glamour theme. This is a step forward our current one because > glamour guys (specially Doru) continued working on it to have a really clean > and simple theme. > - adopt the EclipsePack theme because is an iconset specially thought for > programming that plays very well together. No matter if you do not like > Eclipse (even if I think you are missing the relevance of Eclipse and a lot > of good ideas that we could take from them), is about creating a unified > vision. The old icon set (famfam) was not intended for programming > environment and also there were a lot of different icons incorporated > anarchically. > - adopt a monospaced font for coding (right now Source Code Pro) and a > non-monospaced for the rest (right now Open Sans). I agree with everything, except the monospaced font. When, where, how was this decided ? I didn't see any discussion about this. I would be very surprised if you, or anyone else of the key developers, used that font. Anyone else having an opinion about the mono spaced font ? It is not by erasing all differences with other systems that we will gain traction ! BTW: I don't see the any monospaced font in 30484, luckily ;-) > The objective is to offer a L&F that where visual elements plays well > together. > And there is another more important (IMHO) objective: to offer newcomers an > environment easier to approach. Pharo (and all Smalltalk-inspired > environments) is already very alien for newcomers. We get a lot of power in > exchange of that alienish stuff, but very often the curve of learning or > acceptance is too high and people that could step closer to us are pushed > away. So, my idea is to keep been as alien as possible in the things that > make us Pharo and be the less alien possible in the rest: A nice L&F that can > be feel as "some kind" familiar, is part of it. > > Said so... well you still can switch back to the old and ugly (IMO) L&F > executing some lines of code in your workspace. > > Same to fonts: monospaced fonts is the worldwide accepted way of present > source code. Why should we stay different? > > In any case, please give it a chance before drop it (once I can actually see > why the fonts are not really applied) and we'll see how it works. > > Esteban > > > On Oct 15, 2013, at 12:18 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On 15 Oct 2013, at 08:30, Pavel Krivanek <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> the issue that sets the new Pharo 3.0 look&feel uses a monospaced font >>> for the code. It is only a coincidence that it is not set this way in >>> the prebuild Pharo image. >>> >>> I have big doubts if this is the way to go. I think that proportional >>> fonts are more natural for Smalltalk and without them the code is >>> harder to read and not so beauty. I think that something like elastic >>> tabstops would be much better solution. >>> http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/elastic-tabstops.html >> >> Yeah, I can't imagine many Smalltalkers liking a mono-spaced font, I >> personally hate it. >> >>> On the other way, it is only my personal opinion and if you think that >>> the Eclipse-like look will attract more new users... >> >> I don't like Eclipse ;-) But like Marcus says, it is just a different icon >> set. We want win any points on originality or personality though, which is a >> missed opportunity. > >
