Re: [Audacity-devel] user interface reviewing

[Dominic M. <do...@au...>]

Thanks very much for your detailed comments.

Several people have already noted that Audacity can use GTK 2 if you  
want (and it comes this way with SuSe 9, for example), and that a few  
of the "bugs" you mentioned seem to be specific to your build.  Linux  
is a peculiar case for most software - because there's no binary  
compatibility (like on Windows and Mac) that means that a lot of  
people compile from source (where something can go wrong) and a lot  
of bad binary packages get created.  I'm afraid there's not much we  
can do about this.

And yeah, some of your comments are definitely bugs in our GUI that  
we don't have any excuse for not fixing.  And some of them are points  
that there's a lot of disagreement over (for example, some people  
LOVE our large play/stop buttons, but a vocal minority like you think  
they should be smaller).

However, you also bring up a bunch of serious deeper issues.  In  
reality, the last time the Audacity GUI got a major overhaul was  
years ago, and since then we've just been patching it.  The code  
reflects this - it's getting harder and harder to write new UI  
features because the code is so patchy.

There's no question in my mind that if we had unlimited resources,  
there are certain parts of the code we should just rewrite from  
scratch, including redesigning the UI.  Unlike Mozilla, we wouldn't  
start the whole program from scratch - just pieces.

However, the unfortunate reality is that we don't have unlimited  
resources - in fact, our best developers seem to have more limited  
time than ever.

So my question is, what are the smallest changes that could make the  
biggest difference in usability?  Those could get implemented sooner.

Also, what are areas that need major changes but are relatively self- 
contained?

- Dominic

On Aug 14, 2005, at 8:06 PM, Kiddo wrote:

> Hello there, I would like to show you some reviewing I did around  
> the Audacity user interface. So far, I have received positive  
> feedback from it, and I thought it was about ready to be sent to  
> you. I kept it in a page on my server for flexibility purposes, and  
> avoid spamming the entire devel list. I would really appreciate  
> your thoughts on this. Note: this is on my personal server, if it's  
> down, please try again a little bit later.
>
> http://open-source.nanokron.info/?voir=projets/audacity/audacity- 
> interface-guidelines
>
> Regards,
> Jeff Fortin / Kiddo