On Jun 21, 6:31 pm, Jorge Vargas <[email protected]> wrote: > To be honest. I don't like that. Every tool that has taken that > approach ends ups being bad. Sure we need to make it as much friendly > as possible but I don't want this to become the average idiot tool (no > offense really) but I guess I do prefer to aspire to "the best of us" > recently someone send me this quote. > > "This users are idiots, confused by functionality" mentality is a > disease.Think users are idiots? Only idiots will use it" Linus > Torvalds > > So please please don't read me as "elitist" read me as "best of breed" > both in components and users.
I have to disagree. For some reason many people seem to think that you have to choose between being user friendly to newbies or powerful for the experienced. You CAN make both parties happy. Also, I know you intended not to sound "elitist" but talking about "best of breed users" and that idiot quote from Linus do not help your cause. Assuming someone is an idiot just because they are inexperienced is just about the best way to make yourself sound elitist. :/ I'm not saying it has to be "designed for idiots" ...but there are currently too many assumptions of prior/external knowledge assumed in the documentation. This is what I was trying to get at. Let me go ahead and reiterate...I love Turbogears, and I have nothing but respect and gratitude for everyone who has worked so hard to give us this wonderful platform. But, we are limitting our user base if you assume your users already know some of these things. Let's think of it in a usage scenario, generic new user Bob has been developing PHP sites for years, but has decided it's time to check out one of these new MVC frameworks all his friends are so crazy about. He looks at Ruby on Rails and Django, since they are 2 of the most well known first, then he stumbles across Turbogears and likes some of the stuff he sees. But being as he has no previous Python experience, when he looks at the tutorials and docs he becomes quickly confused by certain parts of the language that he is unfamiliar with. Yes, he could always go do his own independent research, but it would be so much easier, and make him love TG that much more if there was just a paragraph or two mixed in with the current new user docs to help him get past those hurdles without having to search elsewhere. I know for me personally, I've had to search out many of my questions on Pylons, SQLAlchemy and other's websites because there was something not documented on the TG site. The whole purpose of a project like Turbogears is to take all the disparate parts and combine them into one cohesive whole. And this brings me to the JS/widget discussion... If TG were to have a preferred/default JS library it's not that users would be required to use it, it's just that it would be made easy to use and be documented here. If someone wanted to use a different toolkit they'd always be free to use whatever they like, they would just have to research it's use elsewhere rather than on the TG site. I look at Turbogears like the web development equivalent of a Linux distribution. There are all these parts out there one can take and glue together, but the distribution takes them all and glues them together for you so you don't have to. Also in the same metaphor you could look at as Pylons is like the Debian to Turbogears' Ubuntu. This is really how we should be treating documentation and bugs. If a bug is found in Turbogears that is a result of one of your upstream components, let's say SQLA for example. You shouldn't mark the bug as "won't fix/invalid" and tell the user, "sorry...that's an SQLAlchemy bug, not our problem". You should keep the bug open here, and mark it as dependent on a corresponding bug on the SQLA site. Once SQLA fixes the bug, then the bug can also be closed here. This is really the kind of things I think could turn this from a really good project, to a great project ;) I also want to reiterate I understand and very much appreciate that all of you are working on TG pro bono. I really hope one day someone can find a way to make TG development into a full time job, as that will probably be what it takes for things to really go to the next level. Thanks again guys ;) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TurboGears Trunk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/turbogears-trunk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
