[plug] Good GUI Interface Design

[Onno Benschop]

User interface consistency can only be achieved if there is one source
of that interface, this is why Apple was so successful with their
interface.

The equivalent for Linux would be to have the kernel team do the UI
toolbox, thus making it a wasted effort for other developers to
"re-invent" something that is then already implemented.

*HOWEVER*, while this on the surface of this discussion *might* address
some issues, there are a large number of things that are broken in this
idea:
      * Who would trust Linus to come up with a GUI ;-)
      * Just because there is a toolbox, doesn't mean everyone uses it -
        see OpenOffice.org, Mozilla and others.
      * Apple achieved their uniformity because they provided all the
        tools - the development environment, the manuals, the hardware,
        the roms and the OS. It was just simpler for a Macintosh
        developer to use what was there.

I'm not seriously proposing to include a GUI toolbox into the kernel.
I'm attempting to highlight that your discussion is all wrong.

The way we're currently developing OSS, this will never be solved. The
only solution is to find a solution that encourages everyone (at least
the majority of developers) to toss their own GUI effort in favour of a
better solution.

Given that OSS is written mostly by geeks with an itch to scratch, it is
in my opinion unlikely that such a thing will come to pass.

It isn't a bad thing if you think about it though.

While I agree that the UI has a lot to be desired, the lack of
uniformity is as much a strength as a weakness.

Why do you ask?

Because if I don't like one developer's effort, I can go elsewhere. I
can select another application written by another person with a
different idea of how it's supposed to be.

While it bugs me that Copy and Paste is severely broken on my Desktop,
I'm really glad that I'm not in a Windows environment that forces me to
have a close box in one specific place on the title-bar,  and does not
allow me to tweak a little text file and change my user interface on the
spot, or have as many desktops as I feel I need today.

I suppose some enterprising individual could come up with the following
strategy:

Write for example a save-dialog box thing, and have the window manager
tell it every time a new window comes up. The user could in very little
time identify which windows were application save-dialogs and have them
replaced by the new one - sort of like how my window manager will put
all Evolution windows on Desktop #1, and all LinCVS on #8.

Another approach to this would be to get the source code for all the
applications you like and replace the save dialog call to one of your
own. Since we've got the source, we can do what ever we like.

We could even roll our own distro with the resulting applications!

Hey, who knows, we could even fix Copy/Paste ;-)


Onno Benschop 

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