| >Ok, next question: Why do you need window handles the size of interstate freeways on devices without touchscreens? It's not like it's impossible to detect the current hardware configuration. Because options run counter to the gnome dev philosophy.
That can be traced back to the original Havoc Pennington rant to defend Gnome 2.0 (which was actually a controversial release just like every major gnome release since 1.4) :
https://ometer.com/preferences.html >Preferences substantively damage QA and testing. >As someone who reads dozens of bug reports per day, and occasionally fixes a couple, I can tell you that it’s extremely common to find a bug that only happens if some certain combination of options are enabled. >Upshot: more preferences means fewer real features, and more bugs. Of course, what you propose isn't a preference but automatic detection, but the point still remains valid in terms of their philosophy. >One of the hardest lessons of GUI programming is that hard coding behavior can be the Right Thing. Programmers are taught to make everything generic and infinitely flexible. The problem is that the more generic and infinitely flexible your UI is, the more similar it is to a programming language. Lisp is not a good user interface. These are the same reasons why they canned anything related to screensavers and the likes.
Gnome should not be customized, should have brand identity, should not have options whether they are user selected or automatically configured. The UI should be recognizable no matter which device Gnome is run on. Anything that changes confuses the user. If the user installs gnome on a laptop with a touchscreen, what should an automatic configurator the likes you suggest do? make everything tiny so that it's friendliest to screen space since it's a laptop and touchscreen is only sparsely used? or make everything big? |
This often means UI preferences. And I’m afraid you cannot satisfy everyone’s preference. Havoc Pennington was right to a degree, but they have tended to take it too far.