Re: Tomboy in Desktop

[David Nielsen <david lovesunix net>]

man, 24 07 2006 kl. 19:45 -0500, skrev Shaun McCance:
> On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 02:02 +0200, David Nielsen wrote:
> > man, 24 07 2006 kl. 22:58 +0100, skrev Alan Horkan:
> > > APIs get deprecated, but applications get removed entirely.
> > > Sometimes the option to keep using what you were happy with really is
> > > better than having to learn a new different application.
> > 
> > I have yet to actually meet a user who used Sticky Notes, but lets say
> > they exist and are plentiful, I would have expected at least one to
> > chime in and make an practical argument against removing it.
> 
> Sorry, I voiced my concerns in a more general fashion.
> I try not to posit myself as the user in discussions,
> because somebody always comes back with the "you're
> not our target user" crap.
> 
> I use Sticky Notes.  I have maybe half a dozen notes
> at any given time.  They're mostly transient notes,
> and most of them get deleted within a couple weeks
> or so.  I mostly use them as TODO lists, although I
> occasionally use them to jot down other random crap.
> 
> If I did an upgrade[1] and Sticky Notes wasn't there
> anymore, I'd be pretty pissed.  That's my data.  It
> was probably important.  And it's gone.  Sure, I'll
> bet it's buried in a dot directory somewhere.  I'll
> bet I could find it.  I'll bet my mom couldn't.
> 
> And, for what it's worth, I'm fond of the non-window
> behavior of Sticky Notes, though the ability to show
> only selected notes would be appreciated.  When I'm
> coordinating what to do with a note, it's nice to
> have a visually distinct note sort of floating on
> top of things.
> 
> None of this is to say that Tomboy isn't an incredible
> and innovative application (it is).  What I'm saying
> is that I find Sticky Notes meets my needs for what
> Sticky Notes does, and that losing data sucks hard.
> 
> [1] Yes, what's still there after an upgrade depends
> entirely on how one upgrades, which is outside the
> scope of Gnome.  I usually "upgrade" my distro with
> a clean install.  I keep my home directory on its
> own partition and wipe the rest.  OK, I'm weird.

I stand corrected, and yes losing your data does suck rather badly, we
should avoid that naturally. I tend to follow the same upgrade method
and it normally works for me, I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't
or shouldn't do as you expected. This regrettably is a bug, I hope
nobody else encountered it, losing data is the one thing that really
piss users off in my experience - I "fondly" remember once being called
out at 4am to recover the prepared exam questions for the next day for a
teacher who's son had upgraded the system at an unfortunate time.. This
kind of experience makes users cry.

I'd be rather upset if I upgraded my system and my carefully arranged
Tomboy notes went boom. However we have already debated this and there's
even a thread now on migration from one system to another (Gnoperinus
migration to Orca), a similar conversion would be needed if we replace
Sticky Notes with Tomboy, now or at the future date.

We can replace applications but the users data should remain. They trust
us with it, we should be flattered.

- David Nielsen