Re: [libreoffice-design] All at once?

Hello Andrew,


Le jeudi 08 décembre 2011 à 23:11 -0500, Andrew Pullins a écrit :
> sean
>
>
> >  I know that the main UI devs are against sudden change to the UI, but
> > there are somethings like this idea of
> > changing toolkits for at least the gui side of things that DO need to be discussed
> > sooner rather than later and it would certainly be easier to test new ui
> > features and ideas by writing them straight into the new UI rather than
> > have them in the old one.
>
> why is a sudden UI change a bad thing. 

Not a bad thing imho, but rather not materially doable. However if you
found oil in your garden and you can pay a hundred of devs, let us
know :-)

> I know that we can not
> just implement Citrus in one release but if we could why would it be such a
> bad thing to do.

If we could? If I could I'd be pooping butterflies, but it  turns out I
can't. Again, let's focus on what we can do, not what we could do if...


>  was M$ Office changing there UI to their new ribbon UI
> that big a deal. people are going to have to get used to it one way or
> another. whether they get it one peace at a time like most FOSS people
> will, 


Sorry, what does this even mean?

> we just change it on them all at once, or if they change from M$O to
> LO. again not to say that we could, would or should do this. we just need
> to get away from the 16 year or so old UI and make something new.

So, that is something *everyone* (even me!) agrees with. When we say "we
can't" it does not mean we don't want to. It means we can't. The
LibreOffice code is not just very  big, it is also aging  and very
complex. You can talk about how good it will be in the 4.0, but the
truth is, nobody knows how it will be. If you change one piece of code
it tends to affect twenty different other pieces of code, and therefore
that's what makes it so complex. Besides that, while there are many
developers out there, we don't have enough of them to take 10 million
lines of code and turn that into something better all at once. 

Hence it's not bad will, it does rather come down to several factors:
- write UI specifications
- make sure there are palatable for inclusion (don't write spec for a
spaceship)
- make sure these UI specifications are for the most part implementable
within the existing UI (no complete rewrite) as it would mean a much
bigger code replacement than what we are able to do.


> and besides its not like the Citrus UI is all that different from the
> current one. it is very intuitive, just a little different. I mean what
> could possibly be under the page menu... could it be things related to
> page... the only thing that you need to get used to is the changing of the
> UI. but once you relies that there is no longer any text options because
> you have selected an image, and if you where to go back to a area in which
> you can start typing they come back, it should all make seance.
>
> and if you think that is strange and you have a M$ Office just go into word
> and make a table. you will see a table tools, with new design and lay out
> suddenly appear. they released that there are some tools that you do not
> need all the time, and should only appear when you do.

I don't doubt this, Andrew. I thus have a proposal for you: let's take
the Citrus  menu bar. Can you see how it could be implemented in the
existing UI? Perhaps this could be a workable starting point?

best,
Charles.


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