Re: Tomboy in Desktop

["BJörn Lindqvist" <bjourne gmail com>]

> Here's my point of view, completely independent from the fact that Tomboy is
> built with Gtk#/Mono. Here it is in point form, because I seem to be doing
> pretty well with it:
>
>  * Without a doubt, Tomboy is pure awesome.

Yes

>  * Alex says that Tomboy doesn't replace Sticky Notes, he doesn't really
>    want to migrate Sticky Notes data into Tomboy, and that Tomboy and Sticky
>    Notes suit different use cases.

>  * In my experience, users perceive Tomboy and Sticky Notes to fulfill the
>    same (or similar) function.

This means that Alex (the author of Tomboy) is wrong. Users do not use
two different programs to fulfill the same function. Saying otherwise
is like saying that konsole and gnome-terminal suit different use
cases. They do not, on a GNOME desktop, gnome-terminal whips konsole's
butt.

>  * We need a thrilling ecosystem of software that "Works With GNOME!"

Yes. The question is which application do we put in that "ecosystem,"
Tomboy or Sticky Notes?

>  * We don't have to integrate *everything* into the Desktop suite. That was
>    never its purpose. The Desktop suite is all about the OOTB (out of the
>    box) desktop user experience.
>
>  * "Innovation" doesn't have to be jammed into the Desktop suite because we
>    haven't found anywhere else to put it. We have to curtail this idea that
>    the Desktop suite is the be-all and end-all of GNOME.

Tomboy isn't very innovative. It is just Post IT-notes on the desktop
"done right."

>  * If Alex wants to adopt the GNOME release cycle and strategy for Tomboy,
>    that's *fantastic*... but we can approach that differently.
>
>  * Let's give our users the ability to discover and cherish awesome third
>    party software for GNOME. If we suck the known universe into the Desktop
>    suite, our users won't be able to have that experience.

The way to do it is to decide what kind of features GNOME should have.
Then suck in enough apps to fulfill those features. If there is more
than one app that fulfills the same features, choose the BEST one and
let the LESS GOOD one stay in the universe.

What I'm not so subtly hinting at is that Tomboy is a better
application than Sticky Notes. Much better. Sticky Notes is also a
good application, but since Tomboy is better the right thing to do is
to replace Sticky Notes with Tomboy.

We are all technologists, we all love technology and we all want to
make GNOME the best desktop there is. So IMHO, from a technological
standpoint, the decision is clear. But in reality the discussion isn't
clear (which is evident by us discussing it). I think that that
"thing" that is stopping this decision from being clear is very bad
because it interferes with the goal of making the best desktop there
is. I don't know what the "thing" is but I'm guessing that it is
something like "Sticky Notes developer(s) will be disappointed if we
drop it." That is unfortunate, but I think that is how it has to be.
Better software replace less good software.

I hope that in the future many other GNOME components that has
potential substitutes will also be judged based on their technical
merits:

Metacity vs. Compiz
Epiphany vs. Firefox
Epiphany vs. Galeon
Novell's new panel menu vs. The old one
Beagle vs. The memory efficient C-coded search thingy
Bugzilla vs. 100's of much better bug tracking apps. :)
CVS vs. Subversion (already done! Woho!!)
Rythmbox vs. Banshee
etc...

--
mvh Björn