unity-design team mailing list archive

[Scott Kitterman <ubuntu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday, September 07, 2011 03:16:40 PM James Gifford wrote:
> Scott, I apologize for cc'ing you.
> 
> A HIG would promote consistency - consistency is best for the user, because
> (just to pick one example)  if Nautilus has its preferences pane stored
> under "Edit > Preferences", then all applications should have them stored
> under "Edit > Preferences", and not "Tools > Preferences" or "View >
> Preferences" or something else.
> 
> 
> It's all about consistency. The way it is right now, we are "consistently
> inconsistent".

Yes, but the Ubuntu project is bigger than the Ubuntu desktop.  I think that a 
higher level view is needed first.  I think that applications should look and 
feel "native" in the environment that the user has chosen to use.  As an 
example of this, Qt and GTK have a reverse arrangement for which side OK and 
cancel go on, but Qt will detect if it's running in a Gnome environment and 
use the default arrangement for GTK (the reverse is not true, it would be nice 
if GTK did the same).

My chosen desktop environment is KDE's Plasma workspace, but many of the 
applications I use are GTK apps and I want them to look and feel "at home".    
The reverse is also true, so I want KDE applications to look/feel "at home" in 
Gnome 3 or Unity.

In Kubuntu we ship gtk2-engines-oxygen and appmenu-gtk so that when users to 
install gtk applications they look/feel as native as possible.  

I think if users have to consider "Oh, this one is KDE, so I should pick the 
Gnome one instead" we are doing it wrong.  The users should pick the one that 
meets their needs the best.  

Scott K