Re: Scrollbars.

[barny rabbit]

On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 19:04 +0100, Renaud Molla wrote:
> I think creating a free implementation of OpenStep is a good thing,
> the most important one being the API, because the end user doesn't
> care if he's using an OpenStep application or a GTK one, what the user
> looks for is ease of use
> and this is linked to the knowledge he already has of other systems.
> Since most GUI systems have scrollbars on the right, most people won't
> find the GNUstep choice a smart one. (i agree this goes back to
> OpenStep but this is dead actually).
> Furthermore, copying the OpenStep interface like it was in the 90's is
> absurd because it is assuming that in 10 years time, it wouldn't need
> any update, therefore that it is something worth being copied as is.
> 
> 
> Most people won't use GNUstep applications first because they look 10
> year old, and if some really want to give them a try, they get lost in
> menus and other behaviours one can consider strange toward other
> systems.
> However, if the goal is to create something people will always find
> good reasons not to use, then I think it's useless.
> 

I think you'll find that the systems which have the scroll bar on the
right are also more than 10 years old. There may have been advances made
in GUI's in the last ten years, but the position of the scroll bar is
not one of them.

One area where they have advanced is in making more use of the full
colour palette (early GUIs were designed to run on systems with limited
colours and graphic memory), and have moved away from the early
battleship grey motif, although there is still a lot of it around.

I actually dislike the Gnustep GUI purely on its face value. I would
have disliked it just as much 10 or 20 years ago. It may well be
functional but it looks awful - to me.

Actually I have spent much of my life designing GUI interfaces for
application programs, and in particular have tried to come up with a
good method for drilling down through a directory hierarchy, aside from
the prevalent tree method (Microsoft), which I don't like very much. The
most functional and useable method I came up with was very similar to
the Nextstep/Gnustep one (before I had ever seen Nextstep). However I
did not use it simply because I was never able to make it look
asthetically pleasing. It is often very difficult to have a GUI that is
both visually pleasing and functional at the same time.

In general I would always place functionality and useability above
appearance, but I feel that when the quality of the appearance drops
below a certain threshold, then I find it unacceptable, regardless of
the useability.

Sad to say I feel that Gnustep/Nextstep's appearance fails on that
criteria. But if you are able to "put up with" or even like the
appearance of Gnustep, there is no doubting it will be a highly useable
system.

> 
> 
> On Nov 14, 2006, at 6:06 PM, Stefan Bidigaray wrote:
> 
> > On 11/14/06, Marc Brünink <mbruen@smartsoft.de> wrote:
> >         Oh, I didn't cc'ed my reply to the list. But you didn't miss
> >         anything :-)
> >         I wrote something about having a default to configure the
> >         side on which 
> >         the scrollbar is drawn. I think this would be handy as soon
> >         as you
> >         display arabic text. And everybody could choose his personal
> >         preferences. This is always a good thing. Even if it bloats
> >         the code a bit.
> >         But I guess this statement is not new.... ;-) 
> > 
> > This has been discussed already, just a few weeks ago!  I agree with
> > the outcome, which is to leave everything the way it is.  There were
> > some very good pros and cons arguments, but in the end I think it
> > was decided that it's not where the project wants to go.  The main
> > goal is to create a free implementation of NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, which
> > has the scrollbars on the left.  In the last few months that I've
> > been using GNUstep, and software built for it, I've grown accustomed
> > to the location of the scroll bar and actually kind of like it
> > there.  The only thing I actually mess with are the menus, which
> > take up less space at the very top of the screen.
> > 
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> 
> 
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