Gimlé

A couple of interesting user-interface articles have appeared on the net. One argues for sane defaults and simplicity while the other argues for user-configurability and massive user control. I won’t argue for one side over the other. Just ask yourself, what was the easiest and least painful Operating System user-interface you tried?

And how configurable was that?

These articles are interesting for other reasons as well. Havoc used to be the chair of the board on the Gnome Foundation and is still considered to be a bit of an authority in the project. Mosfet used to be heavily involved in KDE development but after numerous disagreements he decided to pull out of KDE development and focus on his own apps (most of which happen to be KDE based). Both are good programmers.

Neither position is new in the Free Software User Interface debate. Emacs is still the supreme king of configurability while the GNUstep project used to have a vehement anti-theme stance. Rightfully so, IMO, themes mean that the User Interface designer is trying to shoot at a constantly moving target, turns the concept of consistency into a joke.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.