Re: gnome-terminal's I pointer shape

[Tony Houghton <gnome realh co uk>]

In <y5w8z1b1ig3 fsf icon devel redhat com>, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> Tony Houghton <tony realh co uk> writes: 
> > Ages ago I wrote a patch to make it stick to the conventional pointer
> > shape, complete with GUI-selectable option. I think I lost it though. If
> > I rewrote the patch, would there be any chance of it being accepted in
> > the official version? I realise Gnome now has a policy of the fewer
> > options the better (not something I necessarily agree with), but would
> > an option that's hidden from the GUI, but settable with gconftool, be a
> > happy medium?
> 
> You haven't given any rationale at all for making it an option - all
> the rationale in your mail is rationale for just changing it flat-out
> by default.
> 
> See
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-October/msg00100.html
> 
> Those questions need to be analyzed when adding any option.
> 
> To answer the question, it can be an option if you can give rationale
> _for making it an option_ which is not the same as rationale _for
> doing things differently_.

I would be happy with changing the default - after all, if I'm the one
who writes the patch, it's less programming than making it optional ;-).

But I'm not sure that everyone would prefer the alternative behaviour.
Although I don't like the I-shape, maybe some people do, and presumably
there was some reason why it was made that way in the first place.

It looks like I need to start a discussion to find out whether there's a
strong rationale for the I-shape, and if so whether my rationale is
strong enough to justify even an option, let alone a new default
behaviour. That's why I posted here first instead of going straight
ahead with a feature request on bugzilla. Is this the best place for the
discussion, or is there a better list for it?

-- 
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk