Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? Whoever it is needs to be fired. /rant
On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:20, Alice Wonder wrote:> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. > > For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is no way > to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you have to > do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. > > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > /rant+1 (or infinity) Hint: IMHO the gnome UI devs played to much with MacOS X and Tablets. Seek the missing menu in the top-bar (upper end of the monitor) The-Fqu? Extra mouse movement needed, just b/c them devs have touchscreens? RAGE! For me switching to XFCE as DE helped enormously in getting work done, not getting angry at the UI all the time was a nice plus. But, lets be honest here, not everyone will like XFCE. - Yamaban
On Sat, January 23, 2016 5:20 pm, Alice Wonder wrote:> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. > > For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is > no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. > > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. >I know, you are not seeking advice or wishing someone to join the rant... which I gladly could do. I was angry when Gnome suddenly switched from logical tree-like menu away to hmm... just search ("as you, stupid, will not be able to follow logic; which we, developers, don't possess ourselves anymore in the first place" ;-) Well, luckily, there is fork of GNOME which is called mate. That is what I use ever since. (It's easier for me as I myself have FreeBSD both on my workstation and PC laptop, and on FreeBSD you have to put your own effort to add X and desktop environment etc anyway). Incidentally, I just checked on my laptop: text editor that comes with mate (plume is its name) has monospace font which is default, I never changed that as I myself just use vi in shell - out of habit. My guess is, the developers that forked mate from GNOME really have a philosophy "do not make any changed unless they are absolutely necessary". This way our teachers taught us to program way back, BTW. Anyway, maybe switching to mate will help to avoid frustration. Good luck! Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 01/23/16 18:20, Alice Wonder wrote:> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. > > For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is > no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. > > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > /rantOh I'm so with you on that. I'm good with the developers wanting to adapt to the current state of popular computing, the tablet, but they should be taking into account that not everyone is using one of those toys as their interface. Maybe they should develop a "desktop", maybe a User Interface would be a better name, for a tablet under some other name, maybe Gnome Tablet for example, that is configured specifically for a small screen with touch sensing abilities. A project fork. I'm forced to use MS Windows 7 at work. They have rolled in so much smart phone/tablet stuff that it makes the desktop even more of a pain to use than Windows XP was. Examples include, you can have your applications any color you want as long as it's gray, and you can no longer search for files by anything other than the file name. I didn't like Windows before and I like it even less now. The main reason I'm still using, nearly obsolete, CentOS 6 is because I don't want to have to deal with Gnome 3. I wish the Gnome developers would stop fixing things that are not broken for people who use real desktop computers to get their work done. Maybe part of the problem is that Fedora/Red Hat have not figured out that the OS should determine if the platform it's running on is a desktop or a phone/pad of some kind and then select a user interface appropriate to the platform. -- _ ?v? /(_)\ ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registered Linux user No #267004 https://linuxcounter.net/ ****
On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:05:02 -0500 Mark LaPierre wrote:> The main reason I'm still using, nearly obsolete, CentOS 6 is because I > don't want to have to deal with Gnome 3.Install Mate on Centos 7 and you never have to touch Gnome 3. I did, and my desktops don't look or work any different today than they did under Centos 6. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com
On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 05:50:15PM -0600, Valeri Galtsev wrote:> > On Sat, January 23, 2016 5:20 pm, Alice Wonder wrote: > > Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. > > > > For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is > > no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. > > > > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > > > I know, you are not seeking advice or wishing someone to join the rant... > which I gladly could do. I was angry when Gnome suddenly switched from > logical tree-like menu away to hmm... just search ("as you, stupid, will > not be able to follow logic; which we, developers, don't possess ourselves > anymore in the first place" ;-) Well, luckily, there is fork of GNOME > which is called mate. That is what I use ever since. (It's easier for me > as I myself have FreeBSD both on my workstation and PC laptop, and on > FreeBSD you have to put your own effort to add X and desktop environment > etc anyway). Incidentally, I just checked on my laptop: text editor that > comes with mate (plume is its name) has monospace font which is default, I > never changed that as I myself just use vi in shell - out of habit. My > guess is, the developers that forked mate from GNOME really have a > philosophy "do not make any changed unless they are absolutely necessary". > This way our teachers taught us to program way back, BTW. Anyway, maybe > switching to mate will help to avoid frustration.I gotta agree with you on that (never mind the occasional issue with some Mate component that irritates me). Never could figure out why Gnome would want to take something that was good, then throw it away in lieu of something indecipherable. but that's just me. -- ---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us ----------------------------- Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, And my hope is in you all day long. -------------------------- Psalm 25:4-5 (NIV) --------------------------------
On 01/23/2016 06:20 PM, Alice Wonder wrote:> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. > > For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is > no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. > > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > /rantA long time ago there was a utility called something like xfontsel with which you could toggle any of the some-two dozen properties of fonts, e.g., you could filter out all italic fonts or show just the 12-pt fonts. Yeah, it took ten minutes the first time to figure out how the utility worked, but then you had a tool that worked, was effective and streamlined, and you didn't even need a mouse to use. Just looking, I didn't find it with yum, but it looks like it's still out there, albeit a mousey version: http://linux.die.net/man/1/xfontsel I agree with others about the wayward tabletization of what's supposed to be a productivity tool. Last month, the touch pad on a new laptop getting in way of that productivity big time, I wrote in code on gnome's website how much fun it wasn't-- i.e., how to disable the touch pad: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Playground/TouchPadPark Alice, maybe you'd drop them a suggestion to include xfontsel, if you find it better than their thinking, to replace the boffotude they're gifting us with. Since I'm in rant mode, who broke the code for 'whereis'? $ whereis xfontsel; echo We need a newline. xfontsel:We need a newline. $ New rule: No smoking the good stuff at work.
On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Mark LaPierre wrote:> I'm forced to use MS Windows 7 at work. They have rolled in so much > smart phone/tablet stuff that it makes the desktop even more of a pain > to use than Windows XP was. Examples include, you can have your > applications any color you want as long as it's gray, and you can no > longer search for files by anything other than the file name. I didn't > like Windows before and I like it even less now.This is totally off topic, and untrue.> The main reason I'm still using, nearly obsolete, CentOS 6 is because I > don't want to have to deal with Gnome 3. I wish the Gnome developers would > stop fixing things that are not broken for people who use real desktop > computers to get their work done. Maybe part of the problem is that > Fedora/Red Hat have not figured out that the OS should determine if the > platform it's running on is a desktop or a phone/pad of some kind and then > select a user interface appropriate to the platform.My opinion is that there's a silent majority who don't hate Gnome3, and that it's not half as terrible as people seem to make out. You can start applications, move windows around, and manage files. What do people really want from a DE? Being able to just type winkey-texmaker and have texmaker start up is suddenly a bad thing? gedit broken for offering you fonts that aren't monospace? I think that's a really weak criticism, considering it defaults to monospace. Spatial nautilus behaviour is a gnome 2 horror feature, and okay and cancel swapping order and all the other fun gnome 2 isms seem to have been forgotten. Maybe I'm just hard to annoy, jh
Am 24.01.2016 um 00:32 schrieb Yamaban <foerster at lisas.de>:> On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:20, Alice Wonder wrote: > >> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. >> >> For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. >> >> It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. >> >> Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? >> >> Whoever it is needs to be fired. >> >> /rant > > +1 (or infinity) > > Hint: IMHO the gnome UI devs played to much with MacOS X and Tablets. > Seek the missing menu in the top-bar (upper end of the monitor) > The-Fqu? Extra mouse movement needed, just b/c them devs have > touchscreens? RAGE! > > For me switching to XFCE as DE helped enormously in getting work > done, not getting angry at the UI all the time was a nice plus. > > But, lets be honest here, not everyone will like XFCE.Any new paradigm forces mental change. For operations people its for sure terrible. But we are here now because of such change: Direct manipulation as concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY -- LF
On 01/24/16 03:16, ken wrote:> On 01/23/2016 06:20 PM, Alice Wonder wrote: >> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. >> >> For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is >> no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. >> >> It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you >> have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace. >> >> Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? >> >> Whoever it is needs to be fired. >> >> /rant > > A long time ago there was a utility called something like xfontsel with > which you could toggle any of the some-two dozen properties of fonts, > e.g., you could filter out all italic fonts or show just the 12-pt > fonts. Yeah, it took ten minutes the first time to figure out how the > utility worked, but then you had a tool that worked, was effective and > streamlined, and you didn't even need a mouse to use. Just looking, I > didn't find it with yum, but it looks like it's still out there, albeit > a mousey version: http://linux.die.net/man/1/xfontsel > > I agree with others about the wayward tabletization of what's supposed > to be a productivity tool. Last month, the touch pad on a new laptop > getting in way of that productivity big time, I wrote in code on gnome's > website how much fun it wasn't-- i.e., how to disable the touch pad: > https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Playground/TouchPadPark Alice, maybe > you'd drop them a suggestion to include xfontsel, if you find it better > than their thinking, to replace the boffotude they're gifting us with. > > Since I'm in rant mode, who broke the code for 'whereis'? > > $ whereis xfontsel; echo We need a newline. > xfontsel:We need a newline. > $ > > New rule: No smoking the good stuff at work. > >[mlapier at peach /]$ yum whatprovides *xfontsel Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit, security Determining fastest mirrors <snip> xorg-x11-apps-7.7-6.el6.x86_64 : X.Org X11 applications Repo : base Matched from: Filename : /usr/bin/xfontsel Other : xfontsel -- _ ?v? /(_)\ ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registered Linux user No #267004 https://linuxcounter.net/ ****
On 01/23/2016 06:20 PM, Alice Wonder wrote:> Sometimes the direction of UI development in gnome really angers me. >I'll have to be one who has to say that I really am not bothered by GNOME 3. It is better out of the box than GNOME 2 ever was, at least in my opinion, especially that abomination called Nautilus spatial mode. It is a bit irritating that things are either really easy or nearly impossible to do, with very little in the middle that are just a bit hard to do when it comes to desktop customization, but, you know, I've not been one to make things too custom. But as far as I'm concerned the Trinity DE is where I'm most comfortable (TDE being, of course, a continuation of KDE 3.x). Yes, there are some packages I can install, but it hasn't been a major deal for me to make it 'just like what I'm used to.' But no environment is perfect; I've used fvwm, lxde, xfce, cde, Apollo DomainOS pads, the UnixPC Office, raw X11 with twm, kde 1,2,3 and 4, and gnome 2 and 3; the only modern DE I really don't like is Unity. But for the rest; well, no real strong preferences. As long as I can start applications and lots of terminals and get some basic status stuff from my DE I'm pretty happy. And GNOME 3 is light years ahead of where we were back in the Bluecurve days, at least with local displays. Remote is a different ball of wax, at least with GNOME 3. I use, and am happy with, CentOS 7 on the both desktop and the server, especially now that I've rolled out enough servers to get used to the way C7 does things. Multiple NICs and static IPs are not a problem, and the new installer makes everything easier to get to, even if some things, like setting up RAID and LVM together, are a bit differently set up and are done in a different way than before. Much better than the windows-style 'wizard,' reminiscent of InstallShield, of before. There are of course corner cases, but my requirements thus far have been met very well with no real problems. The new systemctl way took me all of five minutes to like better than the 'service'/'chkconfig' pair, and so far things seem as stable as C6 on the same hardware. Yes, it is different, and I know some folks equate 'different' and 'change' with 'being worse.' I think different just means different, and it is a separate judgment whether something is better or is worse. Or just different.> For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there > is no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't monospace.Why? Why is it automatic that a text editor should be automatically monospace? (Sure, I use gedit with a monospace font, but that doesn't mean it's not useful with a proportional font). What I want is a knob in Thunderbird to keep the message font from going microscopic even though I have set a minimum font..... but that's something I need to take up with upstream, since it is CentOS' stated goal to be functionally equivalent to upstream EL. To get a 'use monospace font list only in gedit' you should really talk to or file a bug report with upstream.
On 01/24/2016 06:37 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:> Why? Why is it automatic that a text editor should be automatically > monospace? (Sure, I use gedit with a monospace font, but that doesn't > mean it's not useful with a proportional font).Because text editors are used to edit plain text files where the only formatting is intentional spaces, and that formatting only works when every character is the same width. Things like tables etc. in plain text files do not display correctly when a variable width font is used. Therefore when selecting a font to use with gedit, the list should be pruned to monospace fonts unless you specify you want other fonts. With how many fonts are installed on a typical desktop system, needing to hunt through the list for the monospace fonts is simply not acceptable, especially when the selection list doesn't even specify which are monospace. It is thus a poorly designed interface, as it makes it incredibly difficult to do what the vast majority of users need to do when selecting a font for use with the application.
> Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > /rant >Most of them were already fired or left cause of under-funding. Like other OSS projects, they are severely understaffed.
Isn't this basically a volunteer effort? On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 9:58 PM, Micky <mickylmartin at gmail.com> wrote:> > Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > > > > Whoever it is needs to be fired. > > > > /rant > > > > Most of them were already fired or left cause of under-funding. > Like other OSS projects, they are severely understaffed. > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >-- ----------------- Hal Wigoda Chicago
On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 03:20:35PM -0800, Alice Wonder wrote:> It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you > have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't > monospace.The default _is_ monospace (specifically, the monospace system font). You _are_ doing something special by changing the font - and gedit happens to work just fine with proportional-spaced fonts, which someone might even prefer for whatever they're doing. Having another option to filter the font list might be a nice enhancement, but I think it's pretty easy to see why it wasn't a priority.> Seriously, who is in charge with the UI design in gnome? > Whoever it is needs to be fired.This isn't the way GNOME works, or open source in general. Nor is this an effective way to create change. I recommend, instead, filing an RFE at <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gedit> -- although leaving the hyperbolic rhetoric and simply presenting the case is a lot more likely to be effective. (Bonus effectiveness: provide a patch!) -- Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader
On Jan 23, 2016, at 4:32 PM, Yamaban <foerster at lisas.de> wrote:> > On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:20, Alice Wonder wrote: > >> For example, when selecting a font for the gedit text editor - there is no way to ask it to only show monospace fonts. > > IMHO the gnome UI devs played to much with MacOS X and Tablets.I?d say they played too *little* with OS X. That, or they tried to clone it without grokking it first. The standard Mac OS X font picker *does* have a Fixed Width option. The only GUI text editors on my Mac OS X box that don?t use this mechanism to select fonts are cross-platform apps that make you edit a JSON file to change fonts. (Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code.) And ironically, editing a config file to change fonts is more Unixy than Mac OS X.> For me switching to XFCE as DE helped enormously in getting work > done, not getting angry at the UI all the time was a nice plus.CentOS has a GUI? Since when? My CentOS GUI is called SecureCRT. :)
On 01/25/2016 09:07 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 03:20:35PM -0800, Alice Wonder wrote: >> It's a fricken text editor, that should be the default - meaning you >> have to do something special to get fonts shown that aren't >> monospace. > > The default _is_ monospace (specifically, the monospace system font).Yes and I needed a larger font size but only in gedit and the only way to change the font size is to select the font itself.
On 01/28/2016 12:18 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote:> > Not entirely useless. > Not everyone has to deal with systemd yet. > For such people, "How hard should I work to avoid it?" is an important > issue. >Michael Corleone, the God Father Part I: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." Those who consider systemd 'the enemy' should learn it thoroughly.....
Am 28.01.2016 um 18:47 schrieb Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>:> On 01/28/2016 12:18 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote: >> >> Not entirely useless. >> Not everyone has to deal with systemd yet. >> For such people, "How hard should I work to avoid it?" is an important issue. >> > Michael Corleone, the God Father Part I: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." Those who consider systemd 'the enemy' should learn it thoroughly.....+1 :-) -- LF