| You're right, condescension is the wrong word. I apologize. I do think it's misplaced confidence, though. Look at the upvotes/downvotes on the comments in the type-ahead issue thread. What the gnome developers are saying is clearly unpopular, and what the person who filed the issue and others are saying is clearly popular. Yes, of course, that's not a representative sample of all users. But was there ever a representative sample taken? What gives them the confidence to declare that the search behavior is superior, and so far superior that it must completely subsume the old behavior without even an option? No evidence is presented in that thread. They only say "This was a decision made a while ago, because people believed that searching can provide the same functionality." On what evidence is that belief based on, and what would be sufficient to overturn it? How large of a user outcry would there need to be? If this were my software and 59 people thought that one of my decisions was wrong (the largest vote count in that thread), I would start to strongly question my assumptions. No such questioning appears to be happening here. To respond to your specific replies: > technical review This is a design question, not a bug. It's not about the code. The complaint is obviously valid. > I don't think it would be much benefit for there to be a setting Of course, anyone who will keep a setting in one position doesn't see value in there being a setting. I don't either: I'd be even happier if it always worked the old way, instead of a setting. But that's what settings are for, where there's multiple valid ways for something to work and not everyone agrees. > technically viable The old behavior is obviously technically viable, it worked that way for many years. So again, that's irrelevant, unless you're arguing that a setting to switch the behavior is too technically difficult, which seems implausible. > Once the decision has been firmly made, there's little purpose to accepting further feedback after that. Of course there is! If you don't accept further feedback, how will you ever know if your decision was wrong? This is the crux of it: a decision was "firmly" made by some developer based on who-knows-what criteria, and then no feedback is accepted, no matter how loud. > losing users I'm not a gnome user and never will be, but I'm forced to accept these decisions because they affect the gtk file dialogs also, and I can't exactly quit every piece of software that uses gtk. |