Subject: Re: About dialog
From: Dom Lachowicz (cinamod@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 13 2001 - 17:22:49 CST
Hub wrote:
>I agree that trying keep the GUI consistent with the rest of the
>platform is a good idea, but when it comes to the About box, I really
>think that this is being integrist. The About Box have a symbolic
>value as it provide identity to the software. It is also a part we
>can have fun to code, as a proof, most easter eggs are there.
Yes, about dialogs are there to provide identity to software, and
traditionally there are quite a few easter eggs in about dialogs. As it
stands, our about dialog is a (quite good) picture of our mascot and
(boringly) the GPL Header dumped into a text box. I was thinking of making a
logo for the Gnome about dialog that had Abi the Ant in it to preserve our
style & mascot. While looking through CVS Blame, I noticed that the last
non-trivial change to the GTK+ about dialog was version *1.1* of March, 1999
or about 3 years ago. I guess that my argument against your points is that
"fun things get hacked on and identities can change over 3 years." If this
is about expression, why hasn't anyone "expressed" themselves in 3 years ;-)
>On the otherside, I don't think we require consistency with
>gnome-office as currently gnome-office is IMHO just a virtual think.
>Look, they even include OpenOffice inside while it is IMHO the worst
>candidate to gnome intergration.
On Gnome, AbiWord should look like Dia, Gnumeric, Sodipodi, etc... And if
anyone has opened up an Abi-Gnome build next to Gnumeric you'll see exactly
what I mean. OpenOffice is not Gnome-enabled software and won't be for about
1-2 more years until they port their VCL drawing kit to GDK/GTK+/Gnome. In
the short term, all Sun is interested in doing is providing a UNO->Bonobo
mapping and they are doing a really poor job of it, IMHO. In their defense,
we don't have any Bonobo support yet, so they have us beaten there.
Finally, Gnome Office isn't completely vapore-ware. If it is, then I guess
that I'll want to change the topic of my talk at GUADEC2 this coming April
;-)
As it stands, I'm still unconvinced.
Dom
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