Re: How do I switch to Sawfish??

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="textshell neutronstar dyndns org">

> And I think in most cases a well know location in the UI for some setting
> is better than a obfuscated, undocumented and hidden setting is some kind
> of registry. Hidden stuff just to often leaves user no other option than
> reinstall

The cost of those well known locations is pretty high though, and (I'd say)
exponential - as the number of user-visible preferences increase, the cost
in time and understanding increases again and again.

As an example, the /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_tearoff option is one
of the ones 'hidden away' in GConf. The default is off, because tearoff
menus are unfamiliar, useful generally only on rare occasions, and have that
magical "oops, I hit something and now my computer is broken" potential.

However, the code and maintenance cost of this option is fairly low, and
there is a lot of support for it from technical/developer/highly-skilled
users, so it is still available.

I see the window manager option in exactly the same light - the code and
maintenance cost to provide the ability to specify different window managers
manually is minimal, and there's a lot of support for it from the same
audience.

So, the capability should stay, but it's definitely not of interest to
GNOME's broad user audience. Its appearance in the user interface will raise
learnability and complexity costs *and* the code and maintenance costs - an
important point, especially for this particular option. (Which is hard to
impliment nicely, giving a list of available window managers, etc.)

I think it's pretty clear that providing the capability to launch different
window managers is good, but providing the user interface is, in the end, a
waste of everyone's time. :-)

Phew.

- Jeff

-- 
   "Boys will be boys, hackers will be hackers, geeks will be geeks, and    
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                            Master, Crackmonkey