Hi Tomas,
> I am not convinced by this at all; what exactly is
> spatial efficiency of
> a menu? When I open a menu, I do so because I want
> to do something with
> the menu. What matters to me is whether I can do
[snip]
I'm sure that we all have an opinion on this, but it's
important to note that this is not the correct forum
for debating the relative merits of individual Gnome
Human Interface Guidelines. The Gnome HIG exists, and
as a GTK+/Gnome application, our GTK+ interface will
follow the HIG. End of story.
Where we find that the HIG has shortcomings, we should
discuss those issues in the HIG forums and call for a
revision of the HIG. Where we find that the HIG has
inconsistencies or is confusing, we will ask them to
clarify their position. The HIG has already gone
through at least one major revision thus far, and if
we have suggestions, it is reasonable to think that
they could be addressed in a future revision.
> There is a certain tendency in GNOME to hide things
> from the user, to
> provide preferences without appropriate UI, and to
> make it difficult for
> the user to do things in a way that is different
> from what the usability
> people think is the right way. To me usability is to
> a large extent a
> question of personal preference; what works for me
> might not work for
> you and what works for you might not suit me. I am
From this, I can see why your primary OS is Microsoft
Windows, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Usability in its truest form is about making the
simple things simple, and the hard things possible.
Cars don't come with a steering wheel and gas pedal
facing the trunk, just because you think it'd be neat
to occasionally drive backwards while looking over
your shoulder. Usability is fundamentally *not* about
making everything possible or allowing for numerous
ways of achieving the same task. You pick your use
cases and design to accomdate them as best as
possible. The 80/20 rule gets applied liberally here.
It's fine to have different ways to accomplish
different tasks. But it is not fine to assume that
there is 0 marginal cost to our users when we add
another way of doing the same thing. To this end,
uniformity of interface has many large, concrete
benefits to our users. The Gnome HIG has a lot of
ideas - good and bad - meant to unify the Gnome
desktop's behavior. This in itself is a good thing.
What's forgotten in your argument is that a large
point of AbiWord's XP architecture is to *ensure* that
we look and feel like a Windows app on Windows, a Mac
app on OSX, a Gnome app on Linux, etc. I've never
understood AbiWord's XP ambitions as offering a
carbon-copy UI across its various platforms. If we
wanted that, we should've switched to WxWidgets or XUL
years ago and saved ourselves the pain of writing
multiple UIs. What we want is a solid core feature set
and tight integration with the OS. If this means
making the OSX toolbars float at the top of the
screen, or some GTK+ dialogs instant-apply, then so
much the better. It's what our users expect from OSX
and GTK+ applications, respectively. I (and I expect,
many of our users) spend most of our time working
within a single desktop environment rather than across
many. And when I switch from Gnome to Windows, I
expect things to behave a bit differently. "When in
Rome, do as the Romans do."
Further, no one got their panties in a knot when FJF
and Hub tweak things so that AbiWord would be a better
OSX app (eg the "Tool Palette", menu ordering,
floating toolbars), and thus better conform with
Apple's UI guidelines. And there's no reason why we
should do so now with Rob and his HIG changes,
provided that they're largely isolated to the GTK+
platform.
> not keen to have that
> 'users do not know what is good for them' attitude
> imported into AW
> design, UI or otherwise.
I'm not sure that's the attitude that's being
purported. At the end of the day, people just want to
get a job done. Our role is to facilitate that as best
as is pragmatically possible. One way, as you propose,
offers lots of ways to accomplish a goal. Another is
to streamline the experience by selecting
best-of-breed solutions and following the various
conventions shared by your platform. (Of course, I've
tried to make my POV look more appealing :-)
I greatly prefer the latter. There's less surprise.
There's more consistency across applications. In some
intangible way, the experience feels richer -
seamless, and integrated. And I find that I'm
ultimately more productive.
> On a related note, I understand that M$ spends lots
> of money on
> usability research, so having the Word interface as
> a starting point for
> our own is not as a bad thing as some might seem to
> think; there is also
> the fact that lot of people are familiar with the
> Word interface
> (because they might have to use it at work, etc.),
> and this too is a
> usability factor. That is not to say we have to
> follow Word sheepishly,
> or that we could not improve the interface, but I
> would like any
> improvements to be driven by _real_ user feedback
> and some common sense.
Just because they've spent money on usability research
doesn't mean that it resulted in a good interface.
What Word has is market share, and a heck of a lot of
it at that. There's a good argument to be made that we
should be more like Word. After all, everyone's
familiar with it, right?
Well, then what our are merits relative to them? Why
do people use us instead of the copy of Word or
OpenOffice that came pre-installed on their computer?
Cost isn't an issue - Word came bundled, and OOo is
free. Features? They've got us beaten hands-down.
Libre freedom? How many people really care enough to
abandon something that "just works"? Besides, OOo is
Libre as well. If our goal is to be a Libre Word
clone, we're destined to lose to OpenOffice. We can't
lead by following.
One niche that I think we can win is in providing a
more streamlined, refined experience than Word. Word
is a clunky behemoth, and OOo is orders of magnitude
worse.
But in the end, what is all this fuss about? Are you
upset about how Rob changed the GTK+ dialogs to better
conform with the Gnome HIG? That's a barely defensible
argument, IMHO. Do your Windows dialogs not work now?
Is Rob changing how AbiWord fundamentally works? No.
It still arranges letters and images on your screen
the same as it always has. You still use a keyboard
and mouse. All he's done is changed some of the window
dressing.
Are you upset that he changed the menus and/or
shortcuts across platforms, and this affected your
platform? This *is* a legitimate gripe, and one that
should be addressed.
IMHO, our menus are a mess. There are barely-used
items that cause clutter. There are illogical
groupings. There are *plenty* of ways that our menus
differ substantively from MSWord already, before Rob
touched a thing. However, I'm unconvinced that
reverting the patch in its entirety is the correct
course of action. I'm not convinced that it's not,
either.
Finally, please remember that none of us are trying to
make your lives miserable or harm you in any way.
We're trying to make our users' experiences better,
although clearly some people's toes have been trodden
on. That said, there is no need to get as irate and
defensive as this thread has gotten.
Cheers,
Dom
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
Received on Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:42:27 -0800 (PST)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Wed Feb 23 2005 - 17:43:29 CET