From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-02-20 13:40:28
|
Hi all... I posted this the other day. Unfortunately, it looks like no one has a solution at this time. When I'm forced to run windows, I try to make it act as close as I can to X windows. I set windows to have focus-follows-mouse and I run a virtual desktop (virtual dimension and/or vern). The frustration level with windows moving them mouse on me when desktops are switched (it seems windows thinks it needs to move the mouse over a window that last had the focus and gaim seems to always be the winner because it's sticky) and the tooltips that won't go away is so high that I have no choice but to switch to the ad-laden AOL version until the problem can be addressed. Since I have no development environment on my windows work box (other than J2EE stuff), I can't even tackle the problem myself. If anyone has a workaround, I'd *really* like to get it!! Thanks, /greg On Feb 17, 2004, "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...> wrote: |There has been an issue with tooltips, GTK+ and windows for some time now. |Specifically, the fact that they pop up over other apps if you happen to drag | |the mouse through gaim and they don't go away until you mouse over them. |Then, with the latest release of GTK+, it got worse - now they won't go away |until they are clicked on. | |Would it be possible to have an option to turn off the tooltips in the |preferences dialog? | |Or... does anyone know of some other way to get rid of them? -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-03-13 00:04:22
|
On Mar 12, 2004, "Mark Doliner" <ma...@ki...> wrote: |I am personally against this for the reasons outlined in |http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html (see the section titled "The |Question of Preferences"). In principle, I agree that point. However, this request is for the purpose of allowing the user to work around an issue in a dependent piece of software (GTK+ in this case). It does not fall in the category of "add preferences because I can...". Personally, I don't care how it's done - if a plugin could do it, fine with me. But these tooltips have to go! (I'm biased on that last point :-) ) /greg -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-03-13 00:06:30
|
On Mar 12, 2004, Ka-Hing Cheung <ja...@ja...> wrote: |I think even if many people like such a "feature", since it's toolkit level |stuff they should bug gtk+ people to let you disable it in gtkrc (if it's not |possible already) No... tooltips are an application specific thing. You may want tooltips for some application (like ones that are new to you), while for more advanced users, they may not be applicable. To turn them off on the toolkit level is just wrong... /greg -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-03-13 14:05:31
|
On Mar 13, 2004, "Mark Doliner" <ma...@ki...> wrote: |That doesn't change the fact that it is still an addition of a preference tha | t, in theory, should not be |desired by the majority of users. Whatever that gtk bug is should be fixed. | Adding a work-around |in Gaim removes some amount of incentive for them to fix it. Unfortunately, the GTK+ folks are not convinced that there is a problem. They closed my bug report claiming that it was already fixed. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135206 Based on the discussion I had with them offline, it doesn't seem that they really care about this bug because the only way I could reproduce it was by setting focus-follows-mouse in windows and "nobody does that" according to them. In any case, tooltips are not a necessary part of gaim. And even under linux, they do nothing but annoy me. Why not make this a preference? I haven't heard a good argument why not, just the general argument of "we don't want to add too many preferences". Thanks, /greg -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Evan M. <ma...@da...> - 2004-03-13 23:31:53
|
On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 09:05:28AM -0500, Gregory F. March wrote: > Unfortunately, the GTK+ folks are not convinced that there is a > problem. They closed my bug report claiming that it was already > fixed. > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135206 As Hans pointed out, the GTK developers have a lot of better things to do than download older versions of GTK to try to reproduce a bug someone's reporting, especially when they have a ChangeLog entry that indicates it's been fixed. Their response was entirely reasonable. I think they'd be happy to fix the problem if you gave them a reasonable (that is, includes version information, debug traces, or whatever else they requested) bug report. -- Evan Martin ma...@da... http://neugierig.org |
From: Ethan B. <ebl...@cs...> - 2004-03-14 21:37:50
|
Gregory F. March spake unto us the following wisdom: > In any case, tooltips are not a necessary part of gaim. And even > under linux, they do nothing but annoy me. Why not make this a > preference? I haven't heard a good argument why not, just the general > argument of "we don't want to add too many preferences". I fail to see how this is not a good argument, aside from the oversim- plification. Adding a preference to take care of users who 1) use Win- dows, 2) use FFM on Windows, and 3) wish to disable tooltips because their usage patterns cause bad interactions between Gtk+ and (2) does not seem like a good plan to me. Please elucidate. Ethan --=20 To surrender one's personal weapon is to invite disaster. This has been obvious for so long and so often that there is probably a Greek word for the practice. -- Jeff Cooper |
From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-03-14 02:09:13
|
On Mar 13, 2004, Evan Martin <ma...@da...> wrote: |As Hans pointed out, the GTK developers have a lot of better things to |do than download older versions of GTK to try to reproduce a bug |someone's reporting, especially when they have a ChangeLog entry |that indicates it's been fixed. | |Their response was entirely reasonable. I think they'd be happy to fix |the problem if you gave them a reasonable (that is, includes version |information, debug traces, or whatever else they requested) bug report. <flame> See, the problem with Hans' response (and several of the online and offline responses to that bug) is that these "better than everyone else" OSS developers who volunteer all their time, blah, blah, tend to take the easy way out (read: quoting verse). And, while they are at it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? Their USERS!!! Well, duh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I've done my share of OSS, so it really bugs me to be preached at and put down. Let's take the current thread. Gaim has "principles" (who made those principles anyway?) and violating those principles is a bad thing. Introducing these poor gui designs would really hurt gaim. Giving the user too many preferences is bad. Etc. Well... has anyone ever taken a look at the gaim preferences panel? It's called create a panel and throw stuff into it ad hoc. Look at the fonts panel. I still can't figure out what it is for. Whatever, my point is not to pick on gaim - I've used it for years and really like it despite it's quirks. Which brings us back to the whole point of this thread. I want to use gaim on the crappy win32 platform I'm stuck with at work and I can't without a lot of interference from these tooltips. Unfortunately, I'm at a point in my life/career where it is difficult to contribute so I come to this list asking for help. We've already probably spent more time than it would have taken to implement the freakin' preference. Can we just do it? Thanks... </flame> /greg -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Ethan B. <ebl...@cs...> - 2004-03-14 21:59:53
|
Gregory F. March spake unto us the following wisdom: > See, the problem with Hans' response (and several of the online and > offline responses to that bug) is that these "better than everyone > else" OSS developers who volunteer all their time, blah, blah, tend to > take the easy way out (read: quoting verse). And, while they are at > it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? Their > USERS!!! Well, duh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I recently had an opportunity to talk with several other developers of a popular open source project in person, and we discussed this very issue. You know what our thrust was, though? "See, the problem with users' demands is that these 'more important than everyone else' OSS users who don't respect that developers' time is volunteer and takes valuable time away from other projects tend to take the easy way out (read: refuse to put their time or money where their mouth is and continue demanding fea- tures). And, while they are at it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? The DEVELOPERS!!! Talk about shooting your- self in the foot." Huh, it looks kind of different when you read it that way, doesn't it? I respect a user who comes and says "gee, I'd really like to see X." I respect that a user might be disappointed if X doesn't happen. I do _not_, however, have _any_ respect for "you should do X because I'm a USER." Maybe I must missed a memo, but last time I checked it makes no difference to me whether 2 or 200,000 users use my software. The pay's the same! If I write something and other people find it useful, great! We got more bang for the buck. If I write something and someone wants a little tweak, and it looks like it's a reasonable return on investment to me (either it's trivial or I think I might use it myself), I'm happy to do it. Anything past that, though, _costs me time_. Maybe your life is different, but I have anything but plenty of time. > Let's take the current thread. Gaim has "principles" (who made those > principles anyway?) and violating those principles is a bad thing. > Introducing these poor gui designs would really hurt gaim. Giving the > user too many preferences is bad. Etc. The developers of gaim have collectively come up with guidelines that we are generally happy with and try to follow. I fail to see how any rea- sonable person cannot respect that. You may disagree with our princi- ples, and that is fine ... but to suggest that the principles we have developed are somehow inferior simply because _you_ did not vote for them (or whatever you are implying there) is rather selfish, don't you think? I don't agree with all of the guidelines that I, as a gaim developer, try to follow ... but I do agree that having guidelines is important, and where those guidelines are not too onerous or distasteful I quietly respect the wishes of whichever developer cared enough to express an opinion. Where I do find them too onerous or distasteful, I open the principle up for discussion and see if the other developers are not adverse to change. The price of having to occasionally review these things is far less than the price of ad-hoc development with no "plan" (quotated because the plan is, in fact, often somewhat vague). > Well... has anyone ever taken a look at the gaim preferences panel? > It's called create a panel and throw stuff into it ad hoc. Look at > the fonts panel. I still can't figure out what it is for. Sure, it needs help. We regularly take patches from third party users to clean it up, and several developers (not myself, I am sorry to say) have picked individual panels or feature sets and done careful cleanups to improve things in a clean and coherent fashion. Perhaps you should look at the 0.5x panels and decide whether or not we're making progress. The fact is that these things take time, and, despite our better judge- ment, we _do_ tend to work on things which users are clamoring for rather than continually making sure every existing corner is completely buttoned down. Take time out for that, take time out for the scratching of personal itches, and things like the reorganizing of preference pan- els proceed very slowly. > Whatever, my point is not to pick on gaim - I've used it for years and > really like it despite it's quirks. Which brings us back to the whole > point of this thread. I want to use gaim on the crappy win32 platform > I'm stuck with at work and I can't without a lot of interference from > these tooltips. I am firmly in the camp that optimizing for crappy platforms is an extremely poor idea. I will stand behind Mark and Tim and Stu and who- ever else has expressed this opinion. > Unfortunately, I'm at a point in my life/career where it is difficult > to contribute so I come to this list asking for help. >=20 > We've already probably spent more time than it would have taken to > implement the freakin' preference. Can we just do it? That's approximately how I feel about it, too ... you've already spent enough time defending it that you could have written your own patch. Can you just do it, or give up on it? Again, it looks different from that light, doesn't it? The notion that open source developers are somehow beholden to their users has always been alien to me ... perhaps because, as a user of many more projects than I develop, I have never felt that any OSS developer was beholden to me. Of course, I also call strangers "sir", hold doors for the elderly and those whose arms are full, always say "please" and "thank you", and chew with my mouth shut. Ethan --=20 To surrender one's personal weapon is to invite disaster. This has been obvious for so long and so often that there is probably a Greek word for the practice. -- Jeff Cooper |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-17 15:32:51
|
i fail to see how, when programing something for your own use and/or the use of your friends having users is anything other than a side benifit. what you fail to understand is that as a user you are a second class citizen. you are still thinking in terms of the comercial software world that is user-oriented because they need to make money off of you. if you paid me something then you could expect me to care about your problems. as it is, you should rejoice that i even listen: i don't have to, i could utterly ignore you and the things that i want <insert oss project name here> to do would still happen. luke On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 09:09:02PM -0500, Gregory F. March wrote: Content-Description: original message before SpamAssassin > Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 21:09:02 -0500 > From: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...> > To: Evan Martin <ma...@da...> > cc: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...>, gai...@li... > Subject: Re: [Gaim-devel] Freakin' annoying tooltips > > > On Mar 13, 2004, Evan Martin <ma...@da...> wrote: > > |As Hans pointed out, the GTK developers have a lot of better things to > |do than download older versions of GTK to try to reproduce a bug > |someone's reporting, especially when they have a ChangeLog entry > |that indicates it's been fixed. > | > |Their response was entirely reasonable. I think they'd be happy to fix > |the problem if you gave them a reasonable (that is, includes version > |information, debug traces, or whatever else they requested) bug report. > > <flame> > > See, the problem with Hans' response (and several of the online and > offline responses to that bug) is that these "better than everyone > else" OSS developers who volunteer all their time, blah, blah, tend to > take the easy way out (read: quoting verse). And, while they are at > it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? Their > USERS!!! Well, duh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. > > I've done my share of OSS, so it really bugs me to be preached at and > put down. > > Let's take the current thread. Gaim has "principles" (who made those > principles anyway?) and violating those principles is a bad thing. > Introducing these poor gui designs would really hurt gaim. Giving the > user too many preferences is bad. Etc. > > Well... has anyone ever taken a look at the gaim preferences panel? > It's called create a panel and throw stuff into it ad hoc. Look at > the fonts panel. I still can't figure out what it is for. > > Whatever, my point is not to pick on gaim - I've used it for years and > really like it despite it's quirks. Which brings us back to the whole > point of this thread. I want to use gaim on the crappy win32 platform > I'm stuck with at work and I can't without a lot of interference from > these tooltips. > > Unfortunately, I'm at a point in my life/career where it is difficult > to contribute so I come to this list asking for help. > > We've already probably spent more time than it would have taken to > implement the freakin' preference. Can we just do it? > > Thanks... > > </flame> > > /greg > > > -- > Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials > Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of > GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system > administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click > _______________________________________________ > Gaim-devel mailing list > Gai...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel -- -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. |
From: Simone C. <si...@ca...> - 2004-03-17 16:01:34
|
Il giorno 17/mar/04, alle 16:32, Luke Schierer ha scritto: > i fail to see how, when programing something for your own use and/or > the > use of your friends having users is anything other than a side benifit. > what you fail to understand is that as a user you are a second class > citizen. you are still thinking in terms of the comercial software > world > that is user-oriented because they need to make money off of you. if > you > paid me something then you could expect me to care about your problems. > as it is, you should rejoice that i even listen: i don't have to, i > could utterly ignore you and the things that i want <insert oss project > name here> to do would still happen. Let me do a bit of trolling, but I am curious. I agree that the model you described up there: it is definitely someting within your rights, and OSS developer does not equal to working-for-free-moron or even freedom-idealist. After all, one could always fork the project. Back to the point of contributions ("if you paid me something then you could expect me to care about your problems") I wonder if the Gaim development team ever received some donations (money or else) and if you're willing to receive such donations. Moreover, if such donations will determine what things are being done and/or internal development priorities. Do you think that building a transparent model for handling donations would be "needed", "ethical", or what? for example, what if I am a rich moron that would donate 10K EUR if the official branch of gaim will contain a preference to disable buddy list tooltips? Will you accept them? Will you comply to the request? Let me say I am not an OSS fundamentalist or whatsoever. I am only interested in your point about this "problem". Thanks in advance for your answers. > > luke > > On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 09:09:02PM -0500, Gregory F. March wrote: > > Content-Description: original message before SpamAssassin >> Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 21:09:02 -0500 >> From: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...> >> To: Evan Martin <ma...@da...> >> cc: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...>, >> gai...@li... >> Subject: Re: [Gaim-devel] Freakin' annoying tooltips >> >> >> On Mar 13, 2004, Evan Martin <ma...@da...> wrote: >> >> |As Hans pointed out, the GTK developers have a lot of better things >> to >> |do than download older versions of GTK to try to reproduce a bug >> |someone's reporting, especially when they have a ChangeLog entry >> |that indicates it's been fixed. >> | >> |Their response was entirely reasonable. I think they'd be happy to >> fix >> |the problem if you gave them a reasonable (that is, includes version >> |information, debug traces, or whatever else they requested) bug >> report. >> >> <flame> >> >> See, the problem with Hans' response (and several of the online and >> offline responses to that bug) is that these "better than everyone >> else" OSS developers who volunteer all their time, blah, blah, tend to >> take the easy way out (read: quoting verse). And, while they are at >> it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? Their >> USERS!!! Well, duh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. >> >> I've done my share of OSS, so it really bugs me to be preached at and >> put down. >> >> Let's take the current thread. Gaim has "principles" (who made those >> principles anyway?) and violating those principles is a bad thing. >> Introducing these poor gui designs would really hurt gaim. Giving the >> user too many preferences is bad. Etc. >> >> Well... has anyone ever taken a look at the gaim preferences panel? >> It's called create a panel and throw stuff into it ad hoc. Look at >> the fonts panel. I still can't figure out what it is for. >> >> Whatever, my point is not to pick on gaim - I've used it for years and >> really like it despite it's quirks. Which brings us back to the whole >> point of this thread. I want to use gaim on the crappy win32 platform >> I'm stuck with at work and I can't without a lot of interference from >> these tooltips. >> >> Unfortunately, I'm at a point in my life/career where it is difficult >> to contribute so I come to this list asking for help. >> >> We've already probably spent more time than it would have taken to >> implement the freakin' preference. Can we just do it? >> >> Thanks... >> >> </flame> >> >> /greg >> >> >> -- >> Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- >> AIM:GfmNet >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------- >> This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials >> Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of >> GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system >> administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click >> _______________________________________________ >> Gaim-devel mailing list >> Gai...@li... >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel > > > -- > -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials > Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of > GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system > administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click > _______________________________________________ > Gaim-devel mailing list > Gai...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel > -- . Simone Caldana: Pear Minister of Foreign Affairs . . Aiming to become a vi mug - currently jumping around . . si...@ca... http://simone.caldana.org . |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-17 16:29:31
|
On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 04:59:24PM +0100, Simone Caldana wrote: > Il giorno 17/mar/04, alle 16:32, Luke Schierer ha scritto: > > >i fail to see how, when programing something for your own use and/or > >the > >use of your friends having users is anything other than a side benifit. > >what you fail to understand is that as a user you are a second class > >citizen. you are still thinking in terms of the comercial software > >world > >that is user-oriented because they need to make money off of you. if > >you > >paid me something then you could expect me to care about your problems. > >as it is, you should rejoice that i even listen: i don't have to, i > >could utterly ignore you and the things that i want <insert oss project > >name here> to do would still happen. > > Let me do a bit of trolling, but I am curious. > > I agree that the model you described up there: it is definitely > someting within your rights, and OSS developer does not equal to > working-for-free-moron or even freedom-idealist. > After all, one could always fork the project. > > Back to the point of contributions ("if you paid me something then you > could expect me to care about your problems") I wonder if the Gaim > development team ever received some donations (money or else) and if > you're willing to receive such donations. Moreover, if such donations > will determine what things are being done and/or internal development > priorities. > > Do you think that building a transparent model for handling donations > would be "needed", "ethical", or what? > > for example, what if I am a rich moron that would donate 10K EUR if the > official branch of gaim will contain a preference to disable buddy list > tooltips? Will you accept them? Will you comply to the request? > > Let me say I am not an OSS fundamentalist or whatsoever. I am only > interested in your point about this "problem". > > Thanks in advance for your answers. lol, okay, i mostly deserved far worse a troll than this. I should know better than reply to my email when i'm in a bad mood ;-). anyway, yes IF we had some donation system going, and IF you donated, then from my point of view at least we would be morally compelled to let your requests influence the direction we take. as to if its needed or desirable, i would say no, mostly because if we did such a thing, we really ought to set it up such that more than just those of us with cvs access benifit from it, gaim accepts many patches each year and those who submit them are often doing the very work that we dislike, and thus more in lines with what people would actually be donating to get done, because while the number of downloads and page views we get a month make gaim one of the biggest if not the biggest third party instant messanger, and thus we must be doing something right, no one requested tabs, or the big buddy list, we just decided they are a good thing and worked on them. now perhaps people WOULD enjoy file transfer, or an option to disable tooltips. or any of the other 700 requests in the feature request tracker. but that number of requests, all of which are useful to some subset of users, gives you an idea at the scope of the problem involved in choosing what to implement and what not to. how many people would really use an option to disable tooltips? is the benifit of it worth the cost of having yet another preference? as someone already pointed out, gaim has many preferences already that only make sense to a subset of users. I'm just as sure that most users do not understand the function of at least some of the preferences as i am that the ones that don't make sense aren't the same for everyone. say we were perfect at sorting preferences into a preference dialog. say we even got them to the point where in viewwing any given page of preferences, they all made sense. would you still want umpteen million pages of them? this sounds like there is some magic number of users after which a preference becomes viable, which isn't the case at all. in reality, its rather closer to my original reply. currently preferences get added when we as developers cannot decide on a single behavior or when the behavior is clearly something that everyone will set differently (how long is it before you are "idle", what should your default font style be? speaking of which, someone in this thread asked about the font page of prefs... I'll bet they primarily use a protocol that we don't support formatting on, or which inherently doesn't have much formatting). so we have been rejecting a preference, hidden or otherwise, to disable tooltips. would it be useful to some people? absolutely. mostly windows users? almost 100% of users asking for this only use windows. would it be useful to most? or even near a 1/3rd? no, i really don't think that once the relevent gtk bug is fixed it will be useful to 1/3rd of win32 users, much less 1/3rd of all gaim users. are these fractions anything significant? no, i'm just making them up as I go along. luke > > > > >luke > > > >On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 09:09:02PM -0500, Gregory F. March wrote: > > > >Content-Description: original message before SpamAssassin > >>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 21:09:02 -0500 > >>From: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...> > >>To: Evan Martin <ma...@da...> > >>cc: "Gregory F. March" <ma...@gf...>, > >>gai...@li... > >>Subject: Re: [Gaim-devel] Freakin' annoying tooltips > >> > >> > >>On Mar 13, 2004, Evan Martin <ma...@da...> wrote: > >> > >> |As Hans pointed out, the GTK developers have a lot of better things > >>to > >> |do than download older versions of GTK to try to reproduce a bug > >> |someone's reporting, especially when they have a ChangeLog entry > >> |that indicates it's been fixed. > >> | > >> |Their response was entirely reasonable. I think they'd be happy to > >>fix > >> |the problem if you gave them a reasonable (that is, includes version > >> |information, debug traces, or whatever else they requested) bug > >>report. > >> > >><flame> > >> > >>See, the problem with Hans' response (and several of the online and > >>offline responses to that bug) is that these "better than everyone > >>else" OSS developers who volunteer all their time, blah, blah, tend to > >>take the easy way out (read: quoting verse). And, while they are at > >>it, they see fit to put people down. And who do they put down? Their > >>USERS!!! Well, duh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. > >> > >>I've done my share of OSS, so it really bugs me to be preached at and > >>put down. > >> > >>Let's take the current thread. Gaim has "principles" (who made those > >>principles anyway?) and violating those principles is a bad thing. > >>Introducing these poor gui designs would really hurt gaim. Giving the > >>user too many preferences is bad. Etc. > >> > >>Well... has anyone ever taken a look at the gaim preferences panel? > >>It's called create a panel and throw stuff into it ad hoc. Look at > >>the fonts panel. I still can't figure out what it is for. > >> > >>Whatever, my point is not to pick on gaim - I've used it for years and > >>really like it despite it's quirks. Which brings us back to the whole > >>point of this thread. I want to use gaim on the crappy win32 platform > >>I'm stuck with at work and I can't without a lot of interference from > >>these tooltips. > >> > >>Unfortunately, I'm at a point in my life/career where it is difficult > >>to contribute so I come to this list asking for help. > >> > >>We've already probably spent more time than it would have taken to > >>implement the freakin' preference. Can we just do it? > >> > >>Thanks... > >> > >></flame> > >> > >>/greg > >> > >> > >>-- > >>Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- > >>AIM:GfmNet > >> > >> |
From: Simone C. <si...@ca...> - 2004-03-17 17:21:08
|
Il giorno 17/mar/04, alle 17:29, Luke Schierer ha scritto: > now perhaps people WOULD enjoy file transfer, or an option to disable > tooltips. or any of the other 700 requests in the feature request > tracker. but that number of requests, all of which are useful to some > subset of users, gives you an idea at the scope of the problem involved > in choosing what to implement and what not to. how many people would > really use an option to disable tooltips? is the benifit of it worth > the > cost of having yet another preference? as someone already pointed out, > gaim has many preferences already that only make sense to a subset of > users. I'm just as sure that most users do not understand the > function of at least some of the preferences as i am that the ones that > don't make sense aren't the same for everyone. > say we were perfect at sorting preferences into a preference dialog. > say > we even got them to the point where in viewwing any given page of > preferences, they all made sense. would you still want umpteen million > pages of them? > I agree on the problem of preference complexity. Have you considered a basic/advanced preference mode? the original ICQ client has two modes: basic and advanced, and although the first thing I used to do was switch to advanced mode, I saw the reason of a basic mode: the client was very simple, and easy to use. another way to do it is to introduce experimental prefs/hackings in the config files only, a la Mozilla. Expert users should know how to set these prefs and basic users don't even know they exist. Also, third party programs could be developed to handle the GUI for these prefs, leveraging you of the task and enabling mid-expert users to do some GUI-magic. > so we have been rejecting a preference, hidden or otherwise, to disable > tooltips. would it be useful to some people? absolutely. mostly windows > users? almost 100% of users asking for this only use windows. would it > be useful to most? or even near a 1/3rd? no, i really don't think that > once the relevent gtk bug is fixed it will be useful to 1/3rd of win32 > users, much less 1/3rd of all gaim users. are these fractions anything > significant? no, i'm just making them up as I go along. as a last personal note I also find the buddy list tooltip quite intrusive, at times. Having them semitransparent would be perfect, imho (of course when X11 will have transparency support, of course) -- . Simone Caldana: Pear Minister of Foreign Affairs . . Aiming to become a vi mug - currently jumping around . . si...@ca... http://simone.caldana.org . |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-17 17:53:06
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On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 06:19:54PM +0100, Simone Caldana wrote: > > >say we were perfect at sorting preferences into a preference dialog. > >say > >we even got them to the point where in viewwing any given page of > >preferences, they all made sense. would you still want umpteen million > >pages of them? > > > > I agree on the problem of preference complexity. Have you considered a > basic/advanced preference mode? the original ICQ client has two modes: > basic and advanced, and although the first thing I used to do was > switch to advanced mode, I saw the reason of a basic mode: the client > was very simple, and easy to use. > > another way to do it is to introduce experimental prefs/hackings in the > config files only, a la Mozilla. Expert users should know how to set > these prefs and basic users don't even know they exist. Also, third > party programs could be developed to handle the GUI for these prefs, > leveraging you of the task and enabling mid-expert users to do some > GUI-magic. we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on. I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after people fail to execise a little caution or common sense. > > >so we have been rejecting a preference, hidden or otherwise, to disable > >tooltips. would it be useful to some people? absolutely. mostly windows > >users? almost 100% of users asking for this only use windows. would it > >be useful to most? or even near a 1/3rd? no, i really don't think that > >once the relevent gtk bug is fixed it will be useful to 1/3rd of win32 > >users, much less 1/3rd of all gaim users. are these fractions anything > >significant? no, i'm just making them up as I go along. > > as a last personal note I also find the buddy list tooltip quite > intrusive, at times. Having them semitransparent would be perfect, imho > (of course when X11 will have transparency support, of course) > if X supported transparency with any decency, alot of things would be more possible ;-) luke -- -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. |
From: Marcel B. <ma...@ca...> - 2004-03-17 18:11:09
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Luke Schierer wrote: > On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 06:19:54PM +0100, Simone Caldana wrote: > >>another way to do it is to introduce experimental prefs/hackings in the >>config files only, a la Mozilla. Expert users should know how to set >>these prefs and basic users don't even know they exist. Also, third >>party programs could be developed to handle the GUI for these prefs, >>leveraging you of the task and enabling mid-expert users to do some >>GUI-magic. > > > we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was > considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my > biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done > somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the > document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted > to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on. > I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after > people fail to execise a little caution or common sense. > So how about a cheap little (external) GUI thing, sort of like a Gaim Registry Editor, that just shows the xml file as a tree and lets users mess with things at their own risk (explicitly stating thusly when opened or something)? Marcel > > if X supported transparency with any decency, alot of things would be > more possible ;-) > > luke > |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-17 18:31:28
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On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 10:09:11AM -0800, Marcel Birthelmer wrote: > Luke Schierer wrote: > >we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was > >considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my > >biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done > >somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the > >document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted > >to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on. > >I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after > >people fail to execise a little caution or common sense. > > > > So how about a cheap little (external) GUI thing, sort of like a Gaim > Registry Editor, that just shows the xml file as a tree and lets users > mess with things at their own risk (explicitly stating thusly when > opened or something)? > Marcel I do not have time to write a unix program to do this, much less figure out and provide the #ifdefs for win32 compatability. if you (or anyone else) is interested, i have a dtd that was submitted but which nathan decided not to include in the tarball that I can give you as an aid. luke > > > > >if X supported transparency with any decency, alot of things would be > >more possible ;-) > > > >luke > > > -- -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. |
From: Nathan W. <fac...@fa...> - 2004-03-17 18:32:39
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On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 12:52, Luke Schierer wrote: > we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was=20 > considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my=20 > biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done=20 > somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the=20 > document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted=20 > to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on.=20 > I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after=20 > people fail to execise a little caution or common sense.=20 If someone is capable of finding the preference name, and opening prefs.xml, and is incapable of changing a 1 to a 0 without screwing something up....... I don't have the words. -Nathan |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-17 18:34:20
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On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 01:31:44PM -0500, Nathan Walp wrote: > On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 12:52, Luke Schierer wrote: > > we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was > > considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my > > biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done > > somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the > > document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted > > to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on. > > I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after > > people fail to execise a little caution or common sense. > > If someone is capable of finding the preference name, and opening > prefs.xml, and is incapable of changing a 1 to a 0 without screwing > something up....... > > I don't have the words. they'd be typical of some of what we see in #gaim? ;-) -- -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. |
From: Marcel B. <ma...@ca...> - 2004-03-17 21:53:13
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Luke Schierer wrote: > On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 01:31:44PM -0500, Nathan Walp wrote: > >>On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 12:52, Luke Schierer wrote: >> >>>we do in fact have a couple of preferences without a ui. it was >>>considered (nathan might still be considering it) in this case, my >>>biggest objection to it is that hand editing an xml file has to be done >>>somewhat carefully, you can't break the overall validity of the >>>document, and this is a preference that i can easily see geting posted >>>to the gaim forum, obviously the mailing list archives here, and so on. >>>I think it would result in an increased amount of support requests after >>>people fail to execise a little caution or common sense. >> >>If someone is capable of finding the preference name, and opening >>prefs.xml, and is incapable of changing a 1 to a 0 without screwing >>something up....... >> >>I don't have the words. > > > they'd be typical of some of what we see in #gaim? ;-) > > We could call it TweakGaim. |
From: Marcel B. <ma...@ca...> - 2004-03-17 21:58:15
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> We could call it TweakGaim. actually would that be something a module could do, access wise? Because then someone could write a module to deal with advanced options. Just a thought. I'll be quiet now. |
From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2004-03-18 05:20:42
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a c plugin could certainly do this. a tcl/tk or perl plugin would take an expantion of the api each presents. luke On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 01:57:29PM -0800, Marcel Birthelmer wrote: > > >We could call it TweakGaim. > > actually would that be something a module could do, access wise? Because > then someone could write a module to deal with advanced options. > Just a thought. I'll be quiet now. > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials > Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of > GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system > administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click > _______________________________________________ > Gaim-devel mailing list > Gai...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel > > > > -- -This email is made of 100% recycled electrons. |
From: Gregory F. M. <ma...@gf...> - 2004-03-18 14:04:13
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On Mar 18, 2004, Luke Schierer <lsc...@us...> wrote: |however, i still on that grounds would reject this option, as I feel |that the tooltips add more than they detract, and that it shouldn't be |hard to simply not hover over things on the buddy list. I'm done with my argument over users vs. developers because there are just too many contradictions going back and forth. I'll turn my side of the discussion back to design. I believe the choice of tooltips for displaying the user's information is the wrong design choice. In fact, you have almost exactly the same information in the buddy right-click popup "Get Info" (or the lower toolbar button "Get Info"). What has been designed here is essentially two pieces of code that do almost the same thing. If too many preferences is a bad thing (which I will still debate if designed properly - see eclipse et al.), then surely this is a bad thing too. I submit that combining the two into a homogeneous interface, preferably a window, is a better design. Benefits as I see it are: * It would allow user control of what he sees. * It would not be intrusive (on any window system). Enhancements that could be added are: * It could persist and be updated in real time * It could contain more information than a tooltip could. * It could show the buddy icon * It could contain the last "n" messages to a buddy by leveraging the "view log" code. * It could contain more than one buddy Let's see what others think. |you are free to disagree, and you are free to maintain a patch outside |of gaim, and even repackage gaim with that patch. if the number of |people who want it is truely of any magnitude, it shouldn't be hard to |find someone to do this for you reguardless of platform. That methodology just makes a mess for anyone who has a need for one or more patches. Have you ever tried to manage a system with patches? It's not easy... /greg -- Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet |
From: Simone C. <si...@ca...> - 2004-03-18 14:16:54
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Il giorno 18/mar/04, alle 15:04, Gregory F. March ha scritto: > I submit that combining the two into a homogeneous interface, > preferably a window, is a better design. I agree. I often used the fact that ICQ shows IP address to avoid asking my friends' their (dynamic) ip, when they ask me to log in and do some maintenance on their linux boxes (which I made them switch to), but having it only in the tooltip forced me to copy it by hand, being unable to cut'n'paste. > Benefits as I see it are: > > * It would allow user control of what he sees. > * It would not be intrusive (on any window system). > > Enhancements that could be added are: > > * It could persist and be updated in real time > * It could contain more information than a tooltip could. > * It could show the buddy icon > * It could contain the last "n" messages to a buddy by leveraging > the "view log" code. > * It could contain more than one buddy > > Let's see what others think. another possibility is to have an "info" section in the message window, so I could see the info of the person I'm talking with. The info section could be toggled by the usual arrow used to hide the advanced prefs in the account setup popup. -- . Simone Caldana: Pear Minister of Foreign Affairs . . Aiming to become a vi mug - currently jumping around . . si...@ca... http://simone.caldana.org . |
From: Curtis M. <cum...@mt...> - 2004-03-18 18:11:55
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On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 09:04 -0500, Gregory F. March wrote: > I submit that combining the two into a homogeneous interface, > preferably a window, is a better design. > > Benefits as I see it are: > > * It would allow user control of what he sees. > * It would not be intrusive (on any window system). > > Enhancements that could be added are: > > * It could persist and be updated in real time > * It could contain more information than a tooltip could. > * It could show the buddy icon > * It could contain the last "n" messages to a buddy by leveraging > the "view log" code. > * It could contain more than one buddy > > Let's see what others think. For what its worth, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said. And as Todd Vierling said in his thread "Buddy list popups" just now, I don't think anyone is arguing that the tooltips that provide information about the buttons, and UI elements. Just the massive buddy list popups. The patch I submitted earlier only disables the buddy list popups incase that wasn't clear. The tooltips appear to be seperate code, and remain when the popups are disabled. -- Curtis Magyar |
From: Josh S. <jo...@vi...> - 2004-03-18 19:41:57
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i agree with most of what you say here. plus, as far as i can tell from reading the gnome HIG, gaim is really abusing the concept of tooltips: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/toolbars-labels-tooltips.html "The tooltip should be more descriptive than the corresponding menu item, if it has one, but still concise." "A toolbar tooltip is the short description of a toolbar control's functionality that the user sees when they mouse over it." "Keep this description as short as possible, preferably a single verb. For example, Open or Undo." i believe this is the reason so many people have such a bad reaction to these tooltips, because they break the expecteations of functionality in a rather cumbersome way, especially considering that they largely duplicate functionality found elseware in the gui, and do it less well. -josh Gregory F. March wrote: >On Mar 18, 2004, Luke Schierer <lsc...@us...> wrote: > > |however, i still on that grounds would reject this option, as I feel > |that the tooltips add more than they detract, and that it shouldn't be > |hard to simply not hover over things on the buddy list. > >I'm done with my argument over users vs. developers because there are >just too many contradictions going back and forth. I'll turn my side >of the discussion back to design. > >I believe the choice of tooltips for displaying the user's information >is the wrong design choice. In fact, you have almost exactly the same >information in the buddy right-click popup "Get Info" (or the lower >toolbar button "Get Info"). > >What has been designed here is essentially two pieces of code that do >almost the same thing. If too many preferences is a bad thing (which >I will still debate if designed properly - see eclipse et al.), then >surely this is a bad thing too. > >I submit that combining the two into a homogeneous interface, >preferably a window, is a better design. > >Benefits as I see it are: > > * It would allow user control of what he sees. > * It would not be intrusive (on any window system). > >Enhancements that could be added are: > > * It could persist and be updated in real time > * It could contain more information than a tooltip could. > * It could show the buddy icon > * It could contain the last "n" messages to a buddy by leveraging > the "view log" code. > * It could contain more than one buddy > >Let's see what others think. > > > |you are free to disagree, and you are free to maintain a patch outside > |of gaim, and even repackage gaim with that patch. if the number of > |people who want it is truely of any magnitude, it shouldn't be hard to > |find someone to do this for you reguardless of platform. > >That methodology just makes a mess for anyone who has a need for one >or more patches. Have you ever tried to manage a system with patches? >It's not easy... > >/greg > >-- >Gregory F. March -=- http://www.gfm.net:81/~march -=- AIM:GfmNet > > >------------------------------------------------------- >This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials >Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of >GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system >administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click >_______________________________________________ >Gaim-devel mailing list >Gai...@li... >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-devel > > -- ________________________________________________________________ live experimental electronic music -- http://bluevitriol.com independent u.s. drum'n'bass -- http://vitriolix.com |
From: Ka-Hing C. <ja...@ja...> - 2004-03-18 19:58:21
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On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 11:42:23AM -0800, Josh Steiner wrote: > i agree with most of what you say here. plus, as far as i can tell from > reading the gnome HIG, gaim is really abusing the concept of tooltips: > > http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/toolbars-labels-tooltips.html > > "The tooltip should be more descriptive than the corresponding menu > item, if it has one, but still concise." > > "A toolbar tooltip is the short description of a toolbar control's > functionality that the user sees when they mouse over it." > > "Keep this description as short as possible, preferably a single verb. > For example, Open or Undo." It's funny when people take things out of context, that portion of HIG is relevant for toolbar tooltips. If you read the actual text (a copy is conveniently located on my desktop), the first sentence of the paragraph is: "Ensure all toolbar controls have tooltips" Also, while reading the HIG, I found out that it recommends the use of Ctrl-F1 as the shortcut key to popup a tooltip without using the mouse, someone should implement that. > i believe this is the reason so many people have such a bad reaction to > these tooltips, because they break the expecteations of functionality in > a rather cumbersome way, especially considering that they largely > duplicate functionality found elseware in the gui, and do it less well. The tooltips certainly don't break my expectations... as far as I can tell, the GNOME HIG says nothing about tooltips like those on Gaim's buddylist. -khc |