compiz - May 2006 - Fw: patch for colored drop-shadow

I just realized this message went to the wrong place.  I meant to send
this to the list.

Also, I want to clarify, I don't intend to offend or upset anyone,
obviously I love the work that is happening on compiz, I am merely
trying to help.

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 09:39:45 -0400
From: Quinn Storm <livinglatexkali@gmail.com>
To: David Reveman <davidr@novell.com>
Subject: Re: [compiz] patch for colored drop-shadow


Who gets to make the determination as to what is "useless crap"?

This really smacks of the misfeature that gnome is pushing for of
removing all supposedly confusing or needless options until someone
complains loud enough to get them back in.

I can understand hiding options behind advanced tabs, I can understand
removing options that their inclusion has big negative impacts, but
just removing options to remove options is beyond me.

It is beginning to look like compiz will fork early in its development,
one toward configurability and options, the other toward your vision.
I wish this did not have to happen, and hope it does not.

--Quinn
> 
> We can expose add all kinds of useless crap through options if we
> want. If no one uses an option except for when trying what it does,
> then it's useless. I don't want useless options. Every option adds
> some extra code and a few strings, might be very little code in some
> cases but still unnecessary code that I don't want.
> 
> Things that it's obvious that people want to adjust should of course
> be exposed through options if possible. For other things, I think
> it's best to wait until someone request them before they are added.
> 
> To me, the shadow color is not an obvious thing that people want to
> adjust. Hence, why I didn't add it in the first place. But if people
> are requesting this option, I'll gladly accept macslow's patch.
> 
> -David
>

On Sun, 2006-05-07 at 23:02 -0400, Quinn Storm wrote:
> Who gets to make the determination as to what is "useless crap"?
----8<----

To me, the shadow color is not an obvious thing that people want to
adjust. Hence, why I didn't add it in the first place. But if people
are requesting this option, I'll gladly accept macslow's patch.

-David

---->8----
> This really smacks of the misfeature that gnome is pushing for of
> removing all supposedly confusing or needless options until someone
> complains loud enough to get them back in.
> 
> I can understand hiding options behind advanced tabs, I can understand
> removing options that their inclusion has big negative impacts, but
> just removing options to remove options is beyond me.
This was about adding an option, not removing one. Adding code for
options which nobody want to use doesn't make sense. The maintainers
will have to maintain more code, and the users will have a harder time
finding the useful ones and potentially discover (and report) more bugs.
> It is beginning to look like compiz will fork early in its development,
> one toward configurability and options, the other toward your vision.
Personally I've had fun toying with options in compiz that I would never
have thought of (and reverted all but 5 or so), so this critique seems
unfair. "David's vision" is just responsible maintainership.