Re: [Usability] GEdit, Leafpad and Office Suites

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 weibchen cosmopod com wrote:

> Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:17:01 -0800
> From: weibchen cosmopod com
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] GEdit, Leafpad and Office Suites
>
> Dear Community,
>
> With regard to text editors, I believe the approach employed by KDE, of
> having different text editors for different audiences, has significant
> merit.

I was unaware they had a specific strategy.

> Although all text editors are primarily aimed at the input and
> manipulation of text, there is such a great variation between what is
> required by a coder, scripter or other people who undertake a great deal
> of data manipulation and those who want a basic utility for jotting down
> information and so on.

> There is already a good and extremely popular basic text editor tool
> developed for GNOME called Leafpad.

Links are good:
http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/leafpad/

> It would be good to see this included in the core of GNOME.

I wonder if there isn't already a guide on how to propose modules for
Gnome?  There probably should be but here are a few things you should
probably check out before you officially propose Leafpad for inclusion in
Gnome.  (The time for proposals for Gnome 2.14 has passed but perhaps you
could get things read to propose Leafpad for Gnome 2.16, see the mailing
list desktop-devel-list gnome org)

Is the application developer interested in having their work as part of
Gnome?

This is essential.

As far as I know leafpad was already forked by one of the XFCE developers
to create a new text editor called "Mouse Pad".  If I recall correctly
they had slightly different requirements and added more features, notably
improved printing support.

Mousepad
http://www.home.unix-ag.org/bmeurer/xfce/apps.html
Right, the following journal entry explains printing was the main
reason for forking leafpad to create mousepad
http://blog.xfce.org/?p=129

Gnome would have even more requirements.  The time and effort required
might be a whole lot more than what it would take to continue improving
Gedit, it is hard to know.

Other requirements such as, is the application translated?
Is the application documented?  Is the documentation translated?
Can the application be built --with-gnome to include accessibility support
or possibly other features like gnome-vfs or gnome-print?
Does Leafpad follow the Gnome Guidelines for Accessibility, Human
Interfaces, and Documentation Style?  (Maybe I'm repeating myself a
little.)

> Development effort could then be invested in making GEdit into a tool
> that is approximately the equivalent of Kate.

We have little choice over what developer choose to spend their time on.
Adding another text editor like Leafpad to Gnome will not necessarily
mean more people will suddenly start working on it.

When you say equivalent of Kate what do you really mean?

> The user needs of two extremely diverse audiences could the be met.

Which two audiences are you talking about and if they are so diverse is it
really so easy to say they form two disctintive groups which could really
be served by two seperate applications?


Incidentally although I am playing the devils advocate and asking lots of
difficult questions I am doing it because you will be asked even more
difficult questions later and you need to have answers for them if you
intend to put in the work to complete your plan.

Personally I would love for it to be possible to easily reuse XFCE
applications in Gnome and have them as optional drop-in replacements.  I
doubt there are many techincal reasons prenting this, I'd say it just
needs people interested in investing the time and effort to make sure
everything works.

> At the moment, I think it would be fair to say that GEdit does not
> really meet anyone's requirements.

Please do not make assertions.  I do think many more people than those who
complain are happy enough to use it.  We cannot be sure either way.  The
complaints about gedit prove it is not perfect but what software is there
which could not stand to benefit from a few improvements?

> It lacks block-selection,

Is there a request for this is bugzilla?

> good syntax highlighting

Gedit (re)uses gtksourceview for the syntax highlighting, I consider it an
optional extra, a bonus at no extra cost (I'm guessing programs like
Anjusta are using it too).  It is not as comprehensive as the syntax
highligthing in Vim or Emacs but that is a pretty tough challenge and I
guess I never expected it to be perfect and it is being worked on.

> and numerous other features needed by coders yet it is not fast and
> simple enough for low-end users.

The gedit developers are working to improve features and improve speed
too, those requirements are not mutually exclusive.  Having another text
editor wouldn't necessarily change things.  As I said already I'm
optimistic about the work currently being done on gedit, and I encourage
you to try the latest versions.

> I definitely think that Calum's people

"Calum's people"  :)

> should investigate and research this office suite further as there are
> lessons regarding the user interface that could be applied to Star
> Office/OpenOffice.org

Even though he works for Sun Microsystems I believe Calum is not directly
involved in OpenOffice.org developement.  (It is a shame IBM have not open
sourced any of Lotus (not even file format documentation, I asked) or
added OpenDocument support to Lotus, or ported to Linux yet.)


There are many barriers to getting another Text Editor included in Gnome
and it would take a lot of work.  However if you are willing to spend the
necessary time improving Leafpad/Mousepad maybe you could make it happen
and I encourage you to try.

Thanks for your interest in Gnome.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/