Re: The Path of GNUstep (Was: Re: Gnustep + mac + windows? Possib Re: The Path of GNUstep (Was: Re: Gnustep + mac + windows? Possib

[Andreas Heppel]

On 2002-09-23 14:12:05 -0500 Eric Dahlman <dahlman@cs.colostate.edu> wrote:

> I think that you should also look into providing support for all of the trendy 
> eye-candy that you can.  Look at Sawfish I was amazed at the number of people 
> who tried to learn lisp because they wanted to tweak that window manager, the 
> sole motivation was eye candy.
>
> Just my $0.02,
I agree, in that a lot of users might be attracted by "trendy eye-candy", but...
I think, the philophy behing GNUstep is different. It is not just by chance that the 
people who started all this chose the "old" NeXT look, but they did it 
deliberately because it does _not_ have all of this trendy stuff. GNUstep (on Linux and 
*BSD) is _not_ Windows or Aqua but something totally different.
I enjoy the way applications look like just because they don't have all of this 
eye-candy. I don't get distracted from using my computer by blinking, 
squeaking, flip-flopping around gadgets (of which I already have enough in my 
every day live).
From a programmer's point of view I ma glad that I don't have to take care of 
creating icons, pixmaps, sounds and the like. I have done Windows development 
for a couple of years and therefore know how hard it is to design meaningfule 
icons, especially if they have to fit into 15x15 pixels (as Windows controls 
usually require). You waste lots of time on this, particularly if you are not a 
designer. And as you are also doing Windows programming, you know what a 
Windows application looks like if you leave all of this visual stuff away.
IMHO, eye-candy is ok if, and only if, it serves to increase the user's 
productivity, and if it eases the use of a program (a well designed  icon might 
say more than 1000 words). Eye-cany for eye-candy's sake bloats the code, slows 
the system, distracts the user, and usually does not increase the overall 
usability of a product, but leads to the contrary.

Cheers,
Andreas