On Saturday, February 11, 2012 23:42:31 Timothy Pearson wrote:
> well. If they care about the users then they can use your insight to
> actually do something about KDE's flaws. If not, their desired direction
> will be clearer and we can safely ignore a good chunk of the criticism (as
> you said above).
This is a false dichotomy. It is not a choice between "caring for users" and
"doing something about the issues Darrell perceives". We do care for users,
evidence abounds for that, but not all of our users agree with each other.
It's really not "KDE devs disagree with Darrell" as much as it is "other KDE
users disagree with Darrell". (You can swap around Darrell for others in this
thread, of course :)
We can also address various concerns and issues around things like
performance, stability, UI efficiency, etc, etc. independent of making it about
"caring about users" as an ultimatum.
See, here's the thing Timothy: what Darrell wrote fit your pre-conceived world
view. So you, as humans do thanks to our quirk of confirmation bias, accept it
with open arms. If you were to be fair handed and actually addressing
technical issues, rather than trying to build a "feel good together around the
campfire" type of defense against the criticisms of others (amazing irony
there, hey?), then you may note the innacuracies in comments such as Darrell's
as well as the valid points. This is what tells me, along with the rest of
your email, that you aren't interested in really analyzing the situation but
just perpetuating the less useful aspects of what Trinity is and/or could be.
(Innacuracies in Darrell's email include the "more clicks" thing; I've dealt
with this extensively in past blog entries with actual evidence: feature
counts, click counts... You can use Amarok 1 in Plasma Desktop, so that is a
red herring ... There is assumption of overhead without measuring anything;
doing some measurements of 3.5 PIM data usage and data storage and access with
Akonadi is pretty educational.)
At the end of the day, we do care about users. Just as you do. There is
variety in users and we may care for different sub-sets of them, and vice
versa. By way of example, I could sit here and point out flaws all day in TDE
that aren't addressed or have even been introdued by TDE development and then
say "if they cared about the users ...", but that would be patently unfair to
you: you are focused on a certain set of people who want a certain set of
things. That you are utterly ignoring other sets of users, including those who
would like a highly stable 3.5.x with patches from the enterprise branches or
those who actually do rely on the various features found in the various 4.x
applications, doesn't diminish that.
I don't believe that this mindset that you demonstrate is resolvable. I have
come to that belief by observing your behaviour. You are not required to
change that mindset, but I figure it is fair to note that I have indeed decided
to give up on the hopes of a TDE that can coexist constructively with KDE
efforts. It is what would be best for everyone, especially "the users", but it
takes both communities working towards that. The TDE community is too full of
self-belief in a world view of negative, black-and-white assertions, many of
which are unsupported and unsupportable. So be it.
> And yes, Qt4 is the culprit to a large extent when you said "I don't like
> the look and feel of KDE4". What you are seeing is the end result of a
> widget pool and default styles that were designed for cell phones (after
> all, they are what Nokia makes!).
Nokia does make cell phones; the rest of the paragraph is factually incorrect.
One example: The "widget pool" has not changed. If there is one thing in Qt4
that has not received much attention in terms of changes it's the widgets.
> KDE4 could theoretically override these
> defaults, but there is some resistance to creating a new widget set that
> is more appropriate for a desktop environment as far as I can tell from
> reading various mailing lists.
The default style for Plasma Desktop is Oxygen, but there is also Plastique
which remarkbly resembles the default style in KDE 3 as well as Gtk+ theme
integration and even older throw-back styles. You can download other themes
from kde-look.org.
Plasma Desktop has numerous SVG themes, including ones that are very basic in
look and feel. You can change the default layout of Plasma Desktop
dramatically by adjusting the default setup script or at runtime with a couple
clicks (look up the "Plasma Panels Collection" on kde-apps.org).
If there isn't a theme that you like, or a desktop layout that you like, get
involved and make them. It would be a hell of a lot less work than maintaining
TDE indefinitely.
There is not only zero resistance to such things (see the discussion of Plasma
Panels Collection on plasma-devel the other month), but we actually support
such efforts and diversity.
I know that doesn't match up well with the role TDE has decided to construct
for KDE, but that's the reality.
> Part of that is that creating widget sets
> is a lot of work,
Creating a widget set is a lot of work, but less than you've put into TDE. A
lot less. There are also great starting points, such as Plastique. If you like
KDE3's default style, I can not see how you can criticize Plastique.
> and I guess another part is that smaller widgets will
> only serve to accentuate the loss of point-and-click functionality from
> items such as toolbars, treeviews, and toolboxes.
Wrong. Not only does a widget style have very little (and in the case of basic
widget sets: nothing) to do with "point-and-click functionality", there is not
a significant difference between Qt3 widgets and Qt4 widgets in this regard in
the first place.
If you read Darrell's issues, they actually have nothing to do with widget
point-and-click functionality. No, what you've done is taken something written
by someone you agree with and folded it around your own personal (and
fallacious, in this case) complaints that have nothing to do with what the
other person was saying. It's one big mass confirmation bias driven circle
jerk.
That is beyond sad because I do think TDE could be something useful, and that
it does currently provide something that a certain group of people enjoy. The
fantasy world of negativity that is derived more from imagination than fact
that underlies the motivations of those driving the project, however, will
ultimately cripple it.
Recently, I had said I would help with the next set of release notes. Given
the mindset which there is a demonstrated commitment to here, I feel the need
to reverse course on that commitment as I feel it would be a pointless folly
to pursue. Sorry ...
--
Aaron J. Seigo
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