On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 2:10 AM, Ronan Paixão <[email protected]> wrote:
> > To end, not wanting to start a flame war but just about to: > 1) I think MKL doesn't come with Python(x,y) for some time now. > I think the only free-as-in-beer Python MKL out there is > Cristoph Gohlke's. But I may be wrong. > Python(x,y) had MKL at least as of February 2014. I haven't seen anything to indicate this has changed, and at least some indications it still did as of at least September 2014. > > 2) Even though a lot of Spyder's power users use Linux, and > power users are the ones who actually develop Spyder, we > simply cannot dismiss Windows with our prejudices. As much > as I'd like it to be true, Windows isn't going away anytime soon. > Anyone who works in any non-tech oriented (or tech-as-a-tool) > company has to deal with it. I myself "had" to go back to Windows > after 7 years of Linux as my desktop OS, because I simply > couldn't bother having to find two ways of doing everything > (one for home Linux and one for work Windows). Back from the > trolling, a lot of newbies come using OEM Windows machines > at home, and a lot of pros can use Spyder on Windows at work. > So, we must support it somehow. > > I don't see anyone proposing that we dismiss Windows, only that we not forget that there are a lot of non-windows users, so we shouldn't tie ourselves too closely to windows or focus too exclusively on approaches or ways of thinking that are specific to windows. 3) There isn't a lot in the way of "system icons" on Windows. > A sign of this is cross-platform software that has a big Windows > userbase. Take browsers, for example. Most have it's own icons > and some have whole skin/theme-able interfaces. Even Windows > itself has many "skins": 95/98, XP, Vista, 7, 8 (Classic, Aero, > Metro styles). A whole mess really. The point is that Qt is fine > for using native style, but do we have to go all the way to the > icon theme? Just note that Qt doesn't come with "native icons" > for Windows, but if that is the problem, it may be possible to > use QIcon's theme methods. As such, it may be possible to > use system icons where available, but it is my opinion that > some icons won't be available on a lot of icon sets, which > will result in broken overall design. And no, it's most > probably not viable to maintain supplementary icons for each > icon set out there. Maybe for some major icon sets, but > who will do that? Volunteers? > > As I explained, from a usability standpoint, I think native icons are the most important, since people get used to the metaphors used in the theme. This isn't a big problem for a web browser, where the number if icons is usually pretty limited (it seems like internet explorer, firefox, and chrome only have a handful), and even in that case the icons in the browsers are actually pretty similar (nearly identical in most cases). But as the number of tasks you have to do grows, so does the importance of using metaphors you are familiar with. Unforunately, it seems for windows that using the native icon theme is not possible due to license restrictions. I am not sure the situation under OsX, but it is also not possible. Only X11 currently allows automatically using a native icon theme. That being said, I think using the native icon theme where it is possible would be a big benefit. On X11, icon theme follow a specification that automatically handles fallback when the icon theme doesn't provide a given icon from the spec, so spyder doesn't need to worry about that. Of course, letting people choose another installed icon theme would be a good idea. Spyder already lets you choose another widget theme, and QIcon lets you change the icon theme at runtime, so that shouldn't be any more difficult. Spyder could also bundle an icon theme, or at least the parts of one it needs, and when the platform does not provide a default icon theme (as would be the case on Windows and Os X), it can fall back on its bundled theme. That would simplify icon management in general, since spyder could simply get the icon by name, rather than by path. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "spyder" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/spyderlib. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
