[MERGE/RFC] Userdoc Driven Design on the Bazaar 2.0 UI

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ben Finney writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
 > 
 > > As an explanation of the status quo, I agree it's excellent.  As a
 > > marketing tool, I'd say it highlights just how geeky Bazaar has
 > > become.
 > 
 > Hah! My observation is that Bazaar has become, over its development,
 > significantly *less* geeky as time goes on.

Are you sure you just haven't caught up in geekiness to Bazaar?<0.5 wink>

 > > It is quite clear from the tutorial that effective use of the
 > > vaunted flexibility of bzr needs intimate knowledge of
 > > implementation details.
 > > 
 > > But I don't understand *why* it's needed.
 > 
 > I would say its necessary simply because the natural tendency is
 > for the software interface to get more complex as it develops, and
 > it takes significant effort to make it simpler.

Of course, that's the *historical* tendency.  But Ian's post is a
*deliberate break* from history.  So here "necessary" refes to
(techno-)logically necessary, and can't we avoid it?

What I'm hearing from Robert Collins is that there are fundamental
design decisions driving many of these issues, and it will be a
boatload of work to change them.  Maybe there's room for me to buff up
my Python and get hired by Canonical. ;-)