Re: Extremely poor quality of GNUStep applications

[Zhang Weiwu, Beijing]

On 04/21/2011 06:00 PM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> I don't know this application, you might want to try other image 
> display programs. Perhaps LaternaMagica from GAP suits your need, at 
> least I know it works on current GNUstep because I'm its maintainer. 

Just tried. Works perfect:)

> This allegation is general and based on a quite strange sampling of 
> applications. 

You are right these are strange applications, I verified by doing a 
google search and count number of results. But I do not intend do a 
selection for allegation, I do it the way many users normally do, that 
is to browse the repository and see which one's description or name 
interests me. Slideshow is a very obvious name calling for attention 
compare to LaternaMagica, a +5 on marketing.

In my case I browsed the FreeBSD port collection. Ubuntu for this very 
reason in their repository browser (default one in the "Application" 
menu) hid applications that they think not user friendly or not stable, 
in order to avoid 'allegation'. It's to note that a responsible reporter 
or judger or people with spirit of science has to do analysis and 
collect proof, but users are allowed to say what they feel by trying. 
They could be very wrong about what they feel, but setting a rule to not 
allow allegation is to not to allow "easy" expression of feeling due to 
the difficulty to collect evidence. This ridged logical rule, is another 
end of extreme causing usability problems and usability ignorances. Let 
me demonstrate this a bit more in detail: when we migrate offices from 
Windows to Linux, which is one of our business, we have a measurement of 
user's relationship to the new system, it went through curiosity, 
excitement, confusion, dislike, and develop either to hatred or to a new 
state of satisifaction. At each stage different IT action has to be 
taken, and a good understanding of these stages is key to acceptance of 
new system. The biggest mistake is disallowing them to express their 
biased understanding, first because it positions people, "we are IT 
people, you are users", when we could have been a team toward a goal, 
and second it encourages users to communicate with users instead of with 
IT team, doubling dis-satisfaction because usually another user lack 
skill to solve one user's problem. Same way, if you want user to accept 
a system, allow them to say "your system doesn't display the web 
correctly" when the web is made incorrectly for IE. It's all about 
experience. Yes now I learned that what failed me are not gnustep.org 
responsibility, but given the opportunity, you failed to learn user 
experience. (what to learn, read next paragraph).

In a rather foreign view than that of typical developers, the 
availability of bad application for users to make allegation is a fault 
in brand building (otherwise the user would start from famous brands 
like GAP or Etoile instead of discovering starting from GNUSTEP, the 
same way users tends to with Ubuntu instead of bullshitting gtk list), 
in expectation management (yes, call it bullshit, there do exist such a 
thing) or in general user experience management (no emphasize on most 
used features / programs but treat everything the same). I just point 
out the faults, I don't mean allegation that this is gnustep.org's 
responsibility to correct. Faults are knowledge to be learned. As 
professional tone as we managed to reach so far, this is related to 
gnustep and thus allow to discuss.

You can also say this is a developer list thus it's reasonable not 
allowing users to allegation due to their bad feeling and bad luck, only 
truth with proof is o.k. But then you wouldn't worry users reading this 
message and turn away from gnustep, a real developer wouldn't take my 
FUD seriously.

Best.

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