On Oct 15, 2013, at 1:47 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> 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.

mmm... there was a "subjacent" discussion for months, but I agree that we 
should use more the list. 
In any case, this is still an open discussion. 

> 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 !

is not about erasing differences, is about not been different when been 
different does not follows a meaning.
I have my own experience to support my pov here: in my years teaching with 
pharo, I always had "lateral problems" with things that were not relevant... I 
would like to erase that, yes. To keep pharo been unique in the things that 
really matters. 

> 
> 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.

not a coincidence, a bug that arise when I tried to change it :)

>>>> 
>>>> 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

Well... we can still iterate over the idea before release, but we do the best 
we can with the tools we have in the moment :)
For me, is frankly uncomfortable to use proportional fonts when coding... is so 
annoying that I even use monospaced for lists, etc... but well, I accept the 
"current legislation": monospaced for code, proportional for the rest. 

>>> 
>>> Yeah, I can't imagine many Smalltalkers liking a mono-spaced font, I 
>>> personally hate it.

Oh well, I'm a pharoer, and I love them :)


>>> 
>>>> 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.
>> 
>> 
> 
> 


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