Introduction, questions

[John Richard Moser]

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Lorenzo E. Danielsson wrote:
> I really don't want to turn this into a long flame fest, just a few
> personal notes. I really don't see a problem with KDE using a different
> toolkit. There are some excellent KDE applications out there. I
> currently prefer Gnome, but I tend to keep both installed. I also always
> make sure to install fvwm, since I have nothing but pure love for it.
> 
> What I would wish for is closer integration at application level. For
> instance it would be nice to see Evolution and Kontact work together,
> since I prefer to work with "native" apps for each desktop.

Thus is the root of the problem.  I'm thinking from a basic user point
of view, not a technical person.  Remember that although you know how to
use your computer, most people just want to "Get by."  You can't sit a
user down in front of a machine that may look-and-feel different, even
only a little, from application to application.

Have you noticed that most UIs look the same?  File Edit blah blah blah
Tools! *looks up at the top of thunderbird's window* . . . yeah.
There's a reason for this.  The user learns to expect certain behavior.
 If that behavior is varied, the user might not be quite able to cope.
An evolving UI may slowly lead a user forward if it's similar enough to
the previous versions, but hard differences don't interoperate well on
normal users' brains.

Think of the UI like a protocol, and the user like an operating system.
 The UI could be like TCP/IP.  Now a new "urgent" flag is added, but the
old implementation doesn't know about it yet and ignores it, sanely.
Then later a patch is made and it learns about it.  It has to have a new
subsystem added when IPv6 comes out, but that subsystem is easy to write
because it's similar to IPv4 and thus some code is reused.  On the other
hand, the developers have no desire to support IPX, AppleTalk, Novell,
PLIP, and SLIP; the OS completely ignores these and they die out,
leaving TCP/IP as the standard network protocol.

By the same token, a user may come with a large amount of power and be
able to quickly learn all kinds of UI environments quickly; but many
users can handle only subtle enhancements in similar interfaces, and
don't want or even have the desire to learn out of necessity to deal
with several different significantly different interfaces.

This is my observation.  It is neither fact nor opinion, it is simple
logical conclusion.  (My opinion is that KDE just sucks; my analysis is
logical reasoning that may or may not hold true, but is taken for actual
impact rather than personal opinions.  I could just as easily say Gnome
and GTK are ugly, but still conclude that one UI is better and that GTK
is still the most used and thus would require the least effort to unify to.)

[...]

- --
All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
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    Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
    wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
    new problems waiting out there.
                                                 -- Eric Steven Raymond
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