[Brakenshire]

Agreed about the stock apps. I think actually they are being too ambitious. They want to have certain interface guidelines which operate across all apps (things like autosaving state so they can be closed and opened seamlessly), and that's why they're so keen on developing a full suite of their own programs. But independently developing so many apps all at the same time is a massive, massive task. In my opinion they would be better off focusing for the moment on areas where there are gaps, for instance making Shotwell / Pantheon Photos or Geary / Pantheon Mail really excellent. It's making the perfect the enemy of the good to redirect their effort to reimplementing their own music app and their own text editor etc, when there are good alternatives.

Agree about the general sentiment, also. In general it's an excellent project.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

Really the best strategy would be to take existing Linux desktop staples and send patches that allow them to be reskinned enough to get the consistent L+F they want.

[erikpukinskis]

The presumption there is that the UI differences are at the skin level, and not tied to behavior, application architecture, toolkit decisions, etc.

The other approach they could take is the Mono/.net approach, which is to have some core domain logic, and then use that as a back-end for multiple independent UIs. A well-designed back-end allows the UIs to be relatively lightweight and hopefully maintainable.

The trouble is, some of what makes "existing Linux desktop staples" is non-trivial UI work. And sometimes adding a back-end front-end split can add a lot of complexity.

In the end, I think the reason we see such division on the question of custom app VS custom skin VS reusable back-end is that there are serious trade-offs in each direction.