unity-design team mailing list archive

[Petko <pditchev@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/09/2012 07:48 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
> Ok. I personally feel that the desktop is a horrible place to keep 
> icons at all. If that's still tempting, then I think other solutions 
> should be promoted. For instance, organizing your stuff in folders 
> that you access by using bookmarks.
What's the point of having a desktop if you don't keep *something* on it 
. I personally have some folders and files .
> I don't really agree with that. You can't use the launcher without 
> either point the mouse at it, in which case it's shown
Well my point is that it's easier to start an app from launcher if you 
have it visible and you don't have to take the 0.5 sec to open the 
launcher and then see and click the icon .
> As much as possible? It's possible to have it open all the time. But 
> isn't it likely that you'll either want to display it all the time or 
> keep it hidden?
The idea is that in a good portion of the cases it's most important to 
have more workspace , and with secondary importance to have the above 
explained luxury of seeing the launcher . What dodge windows does is it 
gives more workspace when needed , and when it's not needed - gives the 
launcher . That's the perfection of it for me .
> Yes, stable code is good. The problem is that when you're adding any 
> code, the code isn't stable. Adding some code in one place might make 
> other code unstable. The more code you have, the bigger the chances of 
> that happening is. Then the question becomes what those two and three 
> features should be. If that's the limit, then you're saying that other 
> features can't be added.
My point actually is that there should be advanced options - those very 
useful things that can confuse new users , but are ... well very useful :D
> > "Here's the four points to keeping such resources :
> >
> > -they might appear more usable further down the road
> Then it might appear to me that it would be wise to add them when they 
> become more usable. Not to keep them around _in case_ that should ever 
> happen. Otherwise, you'd have to consider that code every time you 
> added or changed something until that theoretical moment in time when 
> it should suddenly prove to become much more usable. That's a waste of 
> time.
I had a more specific idea hot they can be useful , but let's say the 
point doesn't stand .
> > -they will be available for advanced customisation and/or 
> > experimentation
> Sure, that'll be nice. For instance, I sometimes flip my right screen 
> to vertical when I read books. Ah, how nice it would be if Unity would 
> discover that I'm about to read a book and flip that screens 
> orientation for me. Perhaps we could suppliment a calendar so that 
> only if I open a book on a Friday afternoon should this happen? And 
> optionally have it scan international bookstores to recognize the book 
> I'm about to read. If it's a comic book, then I might not want to flip 
> the screen. That would be an advanced customization option, wouldn't 
> it? Perhaps that might become very usable sometime further down the 
> road. :)
Yes , do that , compare the dodge windows with the verticalisation on 
Friday thing . I defined my idea of advanced options above .
> > -they generally don't need maintenance
> Those kinds of claims generally needs evidence to back them up. That 
> sounds very strange to me. How can that be possible?
Yeah it's not true , I've done development , but not for these kinds of 
big projects , and didn't take into account the fact that when you 
change one bit of the underlying layer you have to debug everything ,not 
just the changing features.
> > -they don't interfere with "keeping the code clean" . The code base 
> > isn't an interface , and having a rich code base , if it's stable 
> > ,can only be a plus for a developing component "
> You are talking about a text document, right? The source code. More 
> features means more text. The longer that text becomes, the more 
> difficult it is to keep the story in your mind. When that becomes 
> difficult, chances of accidentally introducing bugs increase. Have you 
> ever listened to a politician speak? They're masters at making you 
> forget the questions you intended to ask. They do so by adding lots of 
> nonsense in between. Code is the same way. Nonsense means clutter, 
> which means less clean code. I'm not calling dodge nonsense, but 
> unnecessary features in general.
True , true , it's just that I think that some features (some , most 
useful , not all) should be kept for the above mentioned advanced 
customisation reasons .

Petko Ditchev