[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

[Havoc Pennington]

Hi,

For the record, I'm sure everyone agrees that any useful printer
options should be in some way available. If you're arguing that point
it's just strawman silliness.

On 12/12/05, Linus Torvalds <torvalds at osdl.org> wrote:
> When user interfaces means that something CANNOT BE DONE, it's not about
> "usable design" any more. At that point, it's about UNusable design.

Kind of a truism there.  The interesting discussion is about how to
implement software design in practice. The way you're phrasing it, it
sounds as if software without infinite/all-possible features all
equally emphasized and accessible is somehow broken. You aren't giving
any kind of guideline for what to include or exclude or emphasize.[1]

I tried to walk through some of the ways that one might figure out
which things should be coded first and which things should be more or
less emphasized.

Based on past instances of this thread, here are some other arguments
you might consider:

 -  "all patches should be accepted if they add a feature"
 -  "there should never be regressions"
 -  "a Linux UI should be UNIX traditional instead of Windows/Mac traditional"

I think the one about regressions is the best argument, fwiw, most
people agree in principle at least.

While I'm trolling though, I don't really think it's about logical
arguments. You want software to work the way you expect, like anyone
else.  That's reasonable.

I don't think the motivations/intentions you ascribe to GNOME are
accurate though (whoever "GNOME" is, it's kind of a "they"
tin-foil-hat sort of "GNOME" isn't it?).

Havoc

[1] any chance at the same time you're guilty of complaining about "bloat" :-P