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GNOME Foundation, UI And Linux
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Aug 26, 2000 06:29 AM
from the click-and-point dept.
from the click-and-point dept.
David Huff writes: "Stephan Somogyi of ZDNews has written an article with an excellent take on the GNOME Foundation announcement entitled GNOME on the range " It's nice to a read a story that's focusing on the important part of the future of Linux UI (end user experience, consistency) and not the semi-annual GNOME/KDE resurging rash.
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GNOME Foundation, UI and Linux
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Re:Wrong-headed thinking (Score:3)
Re:The problem isn't the "competition." (Score:3)
B) Competition is good. However, there is a difference between competition and infighting. The current situation here between GNOME and KDE is infighting, not healthy competition. The problem is that they aren't binary compatible. You suggest to stop fighting and write code. For which DE? If KDE and GNOME want to make a better product, they have to adopt a common API, and let the competition be in terms of features, quality, stability, speed, usability, and all that good stuff, instead of on which environment has more software support.
C) A common API guarentees that they will both stay "alive." People seem to have this notion that OSS projects can't die. That may be true, but they sure as hell can become totally irrelevant. No offence to the GNUStep guys, but can you consider that project "alive?" A common API can do wonders for an OSS project. The reason GNUStep is more or less irrelevant is because there really isn't any software. Since an OSS app can't really "die" per se, a common API guarentees that no matter how much more popular one DE becomes, others can always overhual there's and make a comeback. In the end, the user benifets because they use whatever product they feel is best without bloating up their system, and without being enslaved to the wishes of software developers.
In the current state of things, one DE will undoubtedly win. That's the dynamics of proprietory APIs. Do you really think OS/2 would be totally irrelevant if it was Windows95 ABI compatible? On the flip-side, do you think NetBSD or OpenBSD would be used by anyone if it wasn't UNIX-API compatible?
One user's experience (Score:5)
When the technical staff convinced me to transition our shop from NT to Linux about two years ago, I had to begin learning Linux. As I said above, I'm not a programmer or a geek -- simply one of those (either despised or desired) "regular users" that Linux advocates (either regard as unimportant or want to assimilate).
So, my first experiences were with command line and AfterStep (which I found difficult to use) but then quickly moved to the emerging KDE and GNOME environments. GNOME, more than anything else, let me make the transition from Windows user to full-time Linux desktop user. I picked up enough along the way to prefer command-line to file manager, but -- since my orientation is not server management but is, indeed, paperwork, planning, project management, etc. -- the GUI is what lets me get my work done. Without GNOME (or KDE) I wouldn't be using Linux full time.
As a "desktop user" I see things a little differently: I need a better browser and a much better e-mail client. WordPerfect meets my "office" needs (although I see instabilities in Wine [we joke: "Corel WordPerfect . . . bringing the instability of Windows to the Linux desktop"]).
I think it's a matter of focus. Commercial operations that want the desktop users for Linux should pursue initiatives like the GNOME Foundation and support KDE. Those who are interested in other environments should continue on the course that has produced so much.
There are a few difficulties left on the desktop, but I notice that the Windows users who see me work on my GNOME Helix desktop are already amazed and are quite intrigued. I think there's more potential for Linux on the desktop than is generally realized by either the geek community or Windows apologists. A highly functional, customizable, tool-rich desktop will first impress and then entice those users. Desktop users are just as sick of clunky Windows interfaces and instabilities as techies -- many of them just don't realize it yet.
Re:Author is missing the point... (Score:3)
The Gnome User Interface Improvement Project [gnome.org]
Gnome Programming Guidelines [gnome.org]
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The problem isn't the "competition." (Score:3)
When you have two equal options, choice is good. But when people fight over which of those choices is better, you have problems: pride, greed, and so forth. Stop trying to kill each other, pick a DE, and write code!
What I mean is that my Mac can read DOS disks, even though I don't own a MS-DOS computer. My Linux box can write Mac disks. My BSD box can send e-mail to a co-worker using Windows. (Not that Windows is a good choice). As different choices mature, they become more compatible, unless something gets in the way. There is no reason not to have two choices, as long as both work.
Once both options work, the developers of A get the great idea to make it work with B. Then B's team decides to make B work with A.
If you look, that's what's starting to happen right now, despite the fighting between some misguided individuals. KDE can use GNOME skins. We have to encourage this trend, not stop it. It's the Right Thing to do.
By the way, people say that choice confuses users. Look at the KDE panel and compare it to the GNOME panel. Both panels have a button to launch programs. Both buttons are in the same place. This isn't nearly as big of an issue as some people believe.
I like choice. I want both KDE and GNOME installed on my system, so I can use whichever I'm in the mood for when I start X. The truth is, though, I usually start EFM.
Liar Liar, Pants on Fire or (-1, Clueless FUD) (Score:4)
There are a large number [corba.org] of closed source, large scale (millions of lines of code) products that use CORBA that the average sysadmin/linux hacker/whatever will never see or get to use. As an example, the company I worked at this summer (i2 technologies [i2.com] ITWO [yahoo.com]) has a been generating millions of dollars in revenue with a CORBA based Supply Chain Management application for the past couple of years.
You see Corba is broken. but only a little. In order to use it you must build something else on top that actually talks to your apps.
Isn't that what the CORBA Component Model [ddj.com] was designed to fix?
PS: I am a distributed computing junkie and am currently doing research into RMI/CORBA/DCOM and have found a bunch of interesting articles that break down these technologies for people who are wondering what exactly they are...here's an article that compares all three [execpc.com].
(-1 Troll)
so use Apple's (Score:3)
Why not just use their's [apple.com] ? (might as well get some use out of it, judging by the mac mouse, Apple isn't using it) Seriously, though, I agree with everything the article says. I've gotten so fed up with Gnome and KDE that I've started doing most of my work in the console.
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This *is* an Open Source problem (Score:5)
I think open source is great, but it has this one very basic flaw: Geeks write programs for themselves, and hence, for geeks. And we all know that geeks don't care too much for easy-to-use interfaces, but more for powerful ones (see shells, vi, emacs, etc). So when open source people start writing programs with user interfaces, these will be very similar: powerful, but hard to use for the normal user. And inconsistent with anything the users already know (read: Windows).
Now I am not saying that Gnome (or KDE, for that matter) should copy Windows, but that it would be very beneficial if not only coders worked on such projects, but also people from GUI design (and I am sure that there are people with experience in this area reading
Now that open source is growing up (in the sense of: os software being used by non-geeks as well), this is a necessary step. And it brings world domination much closer, too
UIs are (not) only about "ease of use" (Score:3)
(I'm speaking about the "typical geek" here: proficient with >= 1 programming language, knows his/her way around Unix/Linux, etc)
That is right. Geeks prefer advanced, difficult, powerful user interfaces, whereas novice users prefer simple, easy, "magical" UIs. This is because geeks already know their way around. They know how things depend on each other. They have already mapped [reciprocality.org] the Interface in their brain.
Novices have not. They need to learn the UI, begin to place pieces of the map in the right places in their heads.
So, GNOME and KDE are trying to make life easier for the novice by providing them with simple user interfaces that they can use. Of course, they should be consistent. This is one of the most important points of UIs: to make life easy for the user, so that he/she can easily get acquainted with a tool.
But, what if the user already knows the tool? What if he/she has used it often and thououghly enough to have a mental map of what it does in his/her head? If this happens, most tools seem restrictive to advanced users, and therefore, when given the tools to do it, they construct these powerful, hard-to-learn environments.
But that's not the way to do it, IMHO. Instead of producing a one-size-fits-all tool, you (and you, and you) should create tools that are fit for differently experienced users to use. See UN*X, for example. It's philosophy was:
"Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."
(Peter H. Salus, A quarter century of UNIX[TM])
This is a concept that is both simple and powerful. It brought forth tools like sed, grep and so on. These are extremely simple to understand, and if you understand them, they are extremely powerful. Why noone has succeeded in creating an equally powerful and simple concept in GUIs escapes me, but it's definitely time to go create one.
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this post was brought to you by Andreas Fuchs.
Corba is over a decade OLD. Re:What about KDE? (Score:5)
Why should a technology not produce any good results for over 10 years and then suddenly become worthwhile when an open source project starts to use it ?
Not just any Open Source project either but one with lots of backing and funding from everywhere.
You see Corba is broken. but only a little. In order to use it you must build something else on top that actually talks to your apps. Gnome usees Bonobo. KDE used Kom. Despite being built on the same technology they couldn't communicate with each other. Not even when Gnome used the same ORB as KDE ( Mico ).
This is the power of the Hacker mentality at work. They took a broken twisted pile of junk and built a wonderful interface on top of that. Best of all being Corba makes it 100% buzzword compliant. Read this post [kde.org] to asses how much of a "buzzword" it is.
Re:Should have a great UI. (Score:3)
I've often heard people say this, but I've never heard anyone explain why this is a good thing. Should every new model of automobile arrange the driving controls in a different way (accelerator on the dashboard, steering with your feet, etc.), rather than "copy others"? No, because the basic problem of automobile control was solved a long time ago, and there are no advantages and some serious disadvantages to creating a new user interface in every new model. There is minor variation across models, but everyone uses essentially the same solution, and with good reason.
The basic paradigm of menus, buttons, and text fields was worked out 20 years ago; it's old, but it continues to be a good solution to the problem of human/computer interaction. People admire innovation, but I see no point in throwing out a tried-and-true solution unless the replacement offers some real advantages. I have yet to see any new kind of computer interface which seems to represent a real improvement over the current situation.
I'd welcome some sort of written user-interface standards worked out by the Linux community; but I'd hope that this set of formal standards would be largely a cleaned-up, rational statement of the customary practice in the community today rather than some misguided attempt at innovation for the sake of innovation.
Re:Corba is over a decade OLD. Re:What about KDE? (Score:3)
>successful software project based on Corba ?
No more than I realize that up is down and black is white. No offence, but that comment is asinine. Do you seriously believe that there would be over 50 available ORBs for a technology that had never been used successfully?
If you'd like to see some examples of where it IS used successfully, just go to the OMG homepage and follow the links.
>Why should a technology not produce any good
>results for over 10 years and then suddenly
>become worthwhile when an open source project
>starts to use it ?
See above, CORBA is a widely deployed, industry standard technology.
The only way you would be even remotely right is if you had said that GNOME was the first successful implementation of a DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT based on CORBA, which is true. But on the other hand, to my knowledge the only effort towards that end that has failed is KDE.
>Not just any Open Source project either but one
>with lots of backing and funding from everywhere.
And this is relevant how?
>You see Corba is broken. but only a little. In
>order to use it you must build something else on
>top that actually talks to your apps. Gnome usees
>Bonobo. KDE used Kom. Despite being built on the
>same technology they couldn't communicate with
>each other. Not even when Gnome used the same ORB
>as KDE ( Mico ).
You see TCP/IP is broken, but only a little. In order to use it you must build something else on top that actually talks to your apps....
See how stupid that sounds?
>This is the power of the Hacker mentality at
>work. They took a broken twisted pile of junk and
>built a wonderful interface on top of that.
Okay, why exactly is CORBA a "broken twisted pile of junk"? Real arguments please, not complaints from KDE hackers that they couldn't make it work.
>Best of all being Corba makes it 100% buzzword
>compliant.
Well look here, we got us another completely non-techinical argument.
If you want to see a discussion about the advantages of CORBA over a proprietary solution, such as COM or Kparts, look on the KDE list around September, when the decision to drop CORBA as the embedding technology was first made. Hint - it was not universally accepted as "the right decision".
>Read this post to asses how much of a "buzzword"
>it is.
Well, nice of you to provide some arguments, even if they weren't yours. Let's take a look
>Whenever a performant and lightweight
>communication is required, shared library
>components, languange dependend and toolkit
>dependend, are chosen (in KDE).
Whenever performance and lightweight communication is required in Gnome, language and toolkit independence are still maintained by use of an ORB that allows for using a shared library approach for local objects.
>Noone is going to embed a remote spreadsheet
>document into a word document, running on a
>machine on the other side of the ocean. This is a
>nice dream and it is certainly technically
>interesting (no doubt about that), but it is not
>what the average desktop user really wants.
Maybe not across the ocean, but what about across the office, or from ASP to consumer.
Also, what do you mean by the "average desktop user"? Someone on a PC in a home or business?
What about the benefits of a network transparent component model when dealing with internet appliances or thin clients?
And note that after saying that the mythical average user doesn't want this, he immediately gives an example of where it does make sense
>Here language independence and network
>transparency have priority, no doubt. And that's
>why KDE uses DCOP (based on the standard ICE
>library)
Standard here needs to be defined as standard only on X11 implementations on MOST Unixes.
So you can forget about using this standard for interoperability with Windows, Mac, BeOS, etc. You can forget about it for handhelds. You can forget about it for alternate Unix windowing systems.
But wait, they have a solution for that as well! XML-RPC layered on top of DCOP layered on top of libICE.
Now mind you, the base XML-RPC spec is an XML description of an interface sent via HTTP. On top of that there are consideration of nameservices, authentication, encryption, interoperability (only four xml-rpc implementations have been validated as interoperable), etc, etc.
>In the Windows world Microsoft defined COM as
>standard. Who/Which/What defined CORBA as
>"standard" in the Unix world?
The 800+ membergs of OMG and all the companies that built their infrastructure on it? Like many of the standards in the Unix world, it is through industry adoption that CORBA has arisen.
Also, it is a misnomer to say that CORBA is a "Unix" standard, as it is a cross-platform, cross-language standard. It is used in a number of enterprises to tie together heterogenous environments.
In closing, get a clue. Though KDE official documentation and some of the developers like to bad mouth CORBA as a technology, it is proven, mature and widely available. And GNOME shows that it can be used as an effective foundation for a desktop.
Wrong-headed thinking (Score:5)
What will make a desktop Linux? Interface, interface, interface.
Wrong! There seems to be a lot of this thinking in the Linux community -- that the only reason Windows is popular is because of a pretty interface (The "shiny things" theory).
Now, an easy-to-use interface is important, but what is far more important is APPLICATIONS. I simply don't understand why people don't get this. Work is not done with desktop shells, it's done with applications.
Why did Win 3.1 kick everyone's butt despite having a horrible interface compared to the Mac or OS/2? Because it had all the applications that everyone wanted.
There still is not one Linux end-user application that is better than the equivalent under Windows. Not one. And many are greatly inferior. [OT: I often wonder if this is the grand example of where cathedral-bazaar development has utterly failed. You would think there would be one good example of an end-user app that is clearly better, but there just isn't one.]
For Linux to have any chance of gaining a foothold in the "normal" world, it not only has to have equivalent apps, it has to have better apps by a long margin. People are just not going to switch for no reason.
--
On GNOME User Interface guidelines (Score:4)
guidelines is that it requires a lot of effort just to write the
document.
Once the document has been written, applications must implement
various of the user inteface features. The lack of resources in the
free software world to produce this kind of documentation is the most
important problem.
One of the approaches we have taken in the GNOME project was to add a
pieces of the user interface consistency through the GNOME libraries.
Various pieces in the libraries are nothing but programming sugar, and
they achieve two things: simplifying program development and helping
to create same user interfaces.
GNOME contributors realize the importance of this and other issues in
user interfaces. Our approach so far has been to follow the
guidelines from existing systems and try to bring the best user
interface experience details into GNOME. Discussion usually happens
on the various forums about specific user interface improvements.
A year ago, the GNOME UI team was created to help coordinate the
development of user interface issues in GNOME: to write a manual, to
write guidelines, to point out problems in current applications, to
point out desired improvements in applications and so on.
The GNOME UI team has been very successful. Various of the UI changes
you have seen in the October GNOME release (last october) and in the
Bongo GNOME release (last may) were prompted by the UI team.
The UI team is lead by Jim Cape, who takes the input from participans
on the GNOME UI mailing list and presents the suggestions to
the actual developers.
Anyone can help improve GNOME and help the GNOME UI team. User
interface experts from Eazel and Helix have been working with the team
for some time now: both helping and implementing those ideas.
You are right: finding information about the UI team is not easy. I
would love to see changes in the GNOME website to more easily direct
developers to this important resource.
You can read more about the User Interface team here:
http://developer.gnome.org/gnome-ui/
Miguel.
Re:This is what KDE 2's XMLGUI is all about (Score:3)
Re:If you agree then... (Score:3)
When there is only one of anything, the pressure to innovate is reduced considerable. I believe that the rapid growth of features in both GNOME and KDE is largely because of a desire each group to outshine the other. That is a *wonderful* thing.
Consider word-processors. Having a plethora of incompatible word processors with different features and file formats creates confusion for the user. However, if there was a standard file format and a standard set of features, users could choose the one that *feels* right to them. Each word processor would then be motivated to add features and usability to gain mind-share. As long as the file-formats stay standard, people could still switch from one to the other seemlessly. And new features that are successful would be adopted by the other word processors to keep up.
I believe desktops are the same. If KDE and GNOME (and whatever comes next) have a standard (or at least interoperable) distributed object model, and a standard set of UI guidelines. People could choose the one that works best for them and use apps designed for either. Both groups would continue to innovate in an effort to outdo the other and everyone would benefit.