[Scribus] Usability

[Paul Tansom]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 19:49:06 +0300
"Riku Leino (Tsoots)" <foom at welho.com> wrote:
> Paul Tansom wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:23:53 +0300
> > "Riku Leino (Tsoots)" <foom at welho.com> wrote:
> >>Manfred Jung wrote:
<snip>
> >>In my opinion it would be more important to match the "standard" of
> >>the platform where the application is run rather than the program
> >>group where it belongs. In Scribus' case even it's not a pure KDE
> >>application it uses QT and is best run under KDE and KDE users finds
> >>the look familiar. That's where I think we should take the standard
> >>for desigining the look, layout and behaviour.
> > 
> > A very quick plea having read the above - please don't tie the
> > application in too closely to KDE. I have nothing against it in
> > terms of considering it bad or anything, I just don't like it for my
> > own usage. I personally prefer Gnome of the two big names, but even
> > that I haven't used for a long while (my preferences and biases are
> > largely based on usage back in 2000 I guess, but I have used both on
> > machines much more recently so I'm not completely outdated!).
> > However, if there starts to get a heavy requirement in KDE (or Gnome
> > for that matter) libraries then that will likely cause me problems
> > (in terms of do I install the libraries or try to find an
> > alternative).
> > 
> > I don't know whether there are that many like myself, but I tend to
> > ignore software that is too closely linked in with one specific
> > desktop environment unless it is pretty light weight. As an example,
> > I have considered trying out Evolution for mail, but on my system
> > (which does everything I need quite nicely) I would have to install
> > 53 extra packages and use another 82.1MB of disk space just to get a
> > different email client (admittedly fairly fully featured). This
> > comes down to the use of Gnome libraries, etc..
> > 
> > Just to to be sure - I am not having a rant against any desktop
> > environment here (I use XFCE myself which is definitely growing
> > itself!), just expressing the hope that Scribus doesn't become too
> > dependent on large chunks of one or other of them being installed.
> > Ideally I guess there would be a mutually defined layer between any
> > of the desktop environments and the application which allowed you to
> > plug into whichever you happen to use - but that would likely be a
> > massive undertaking, and technically quite an interesting challenge,
> > not to mention a certain extra overhead!
> > 
> > Anyhoo, it is definitely a nice application, and I am looking
> > forward to doing some decent scale DTP with it - can anyone let me
> > have an extra 48 hours each day? :-)
> 
> I wasn't turning scribus into a KDE app there but was just making my 
> point for the original poster that we must tie our decisions UI wise
> to something. We can't make one dialog based on Gnome UI standards and
> another KDE standards. There must be consistence at least inside 
> Scribus' own windows and imo we could certainly loan those standards 
> from somwhere where they already exist and have been tested by loads
> of people. That's why I said KDE there as I'd like to tie them to
> something I use rather than the group of applications working on
> graphics related issues which I have absolutely no idea how they work
> or how they look like. I've never used InDesign or XPress. I based my
> expectations UI wise to something i use on a regular basis which
> really means KDE apps to me.

Don't panic I wasn't implying you were :-) I just had the thought as I
read the reply and thought I'd raise the point. Personally I don't have
a major issue as to which format the menus are arranged in so long as I
know them and they make some kind of sense. I have too many different
apps for that to make a major difference to me. I'm forever switching
from a GTK+ to GTK2 to CLI to QT to etc. not to mention the odd use of
Windows (although primarily other people computers) and Mac. The main
time when consistency among applications is an issue is when an app is
used infrequently. If you use it enough then you get used to the
differences! If you get too much consistency then all desktop
environments under all platforms will all merge into one :-o

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/