[scribus-dev] visual update for 1.4

[Gregory Pittman]

On 12/06/2010 10:49 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 6:09 PM, David Bolack wrote:
>
>>> As if design was done by programmers.
>>
>> Design is done by whomever does the design.
>
> *sigh*
>
> Do you really want me to go for bastard mode again?
> I can spread that with a shovel, you know.
>
> Once again. For the last time.
>
> Scribus has an outright eclectic icon set. This is result of years and
> years or literally everybody contributing to it. This is not
> acceptable for any application. And for an application that is created
> for designers this is not just unacceptable -- it's worse than sin and
> reserves a dedicated circle of hell for the project team in the eyes
> of people who couldn't care less about source code and project
> management.
>
> I really don't care if you agree with that or not, because the way to
> create software that inspires is to always make it better in every
> single aspect, including visual appeal and visual consistence. People
> who are not trained to do design are rarely able to produce appealing
> and consistent results in masses. Take it from the sucker who did
> those disgusting text formatting icons back in 2004 or so.
>
> Make sure you fully understand the two paragraphs above before hitting
> Reply button. I'm really not interested in having argument for
> argument's sake. You can do better than that.

I don't see that there is any point to a rant that is disrespectful of 
differences of opinion. In the case of Scribus and other open source 
projects, I think there there is usually the acceptance that things 
happen by chance, by those who have the energy and knowledge to create 
something and at least try to make something useful out of it.

We can accept that this process will never meet some critics' exacting 
standards, but a group stranded in the desert isn't necessarily helped 
by someone screaming about the need for water (I think I'm beginning to 
feel my water now).

If we try to put this into context, perhaps it means that Scribus has 
become worthy of complaint by the cognoscenti (sorry, I don't know the 
applicable Russian term), and thus it's a measure of actually appearing 
on the radar screens of many potential users. I suppose when we hear 
some vociferous rants from Adobe, it will mean we are clearly doing 
something important.

There is clearly (in my view) a lot of evidence that, not only in open 
source but also in the commercial world out there, that vast sums of 
money and a lot of time can be spent creating some interface which 
clearly has a coherent, highly logical design, which would score quite 
highly on some abstract score of quality, yet from a user perspective be 
unworthy of its effort and expense.

Greg