Gnome Screensaver issues?

[Diamond Software]

> Or add a configure button and exerybody would be happy. Not everybody
> finds screensavers a waste of resources. E.g. a lot of people use
> screensavers like the slideshow with their personal photos.

This is the sad thing - this is all it would take, and most people  
would have no problem moving to the much better gnome-screensaver  
package, but the upstream providers are adamant about NOT providing  
this. I find this very disturbing, which is saying a lot as I tend to  
agree with the Gnome UI goals very strongly (spatial browsing,  
simplified interface, etc). This is less about good user interface  
and more "you WILL use it this way", even though there are many  
reasons that way is wrong. Whatever happened to having sensible  
defaults that could be customized if needed?

Screensavers are purely an entertaining and personal thing. The  
ancient "After Dark" understood this; half the enjoyment was coming  
up with new combinations of settings that just "looked cool". Even  
the original "warp" screensavers allowed adjusting the density of  
stars and the speed of movement.

Nothing about having configurable screensavers affects the usability  
of the system, and it's a very, very strange place to draw a hard  
line. It's something that quite frankly I think should be opposed on  
principle, even beyond such pragmatic concerns as localization,  
performance, mplayer compatibility, etc. How would people react if  
they could only use desktop pictures in a certain "approved" way? For  
instance, if they had to be 4x3, because scaling might distort the  
image (and damn those who use 16x10 displays)?

  - Joshua Ochs