http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/March/0079.html
One of the great things about Open Source projects is that if you've got a
killer idea about how to improve anything about the product, there's
absolutely *nothing* stopping you and your compiler from making your idea a
reality. It's a total meritocracy.
Think about how the development process for the Linux kernel works. There
are a number of talented kernel hackers generating alternative approaches to
various design problems, and the best are chosen for inclusion in the
kernel.
This happens both in the small (one-line bug fixes for the latest security
hole) and in the large (entire new file systems).
As Linus says, email discussions can produce good ideas, but they're
certainly no substitute for running code. At a given moment in time, any
number of ideas are being considered, and the beauty of Open Source is that
everyone who cares about a particular issue can build and run each
alternative to directly compare them. (It's kind of hard to run two kernel
variants side-by-side on the same machine, but for word processors it's
easy!)
Our process works the same way. Instead of talented kernel hackers who are
great at bit-twiddling or interrupts or scheduling algorithms, this project
needs talented GUI hackers who are great at pixel-twiddling or event loops
or formatting algorithms. They're two very different sets of expertise, but
it's the same process.
It sounds like you're as passionate about usability as the rest of us are.
That's great! As it so happens, Jeff has put an incredible amount of design
and implementation effort into making the app framework very customizable in
many of the ways you'd need. He may be understating the amount of careful
work that went into some of our existing GUI design choices, but that work
is by no means done.
So go ahead! Dive into the code. Change it to work the way you want, and
show us all how much better your ideas are.
Paul