On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:34:45 +0200, Sven Neumann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 11:39 +0200, Raphaël Quinet wrote: > > Providing a one-click download button is unlikely to cause more > > problems or confusion. > > In my opinion it would. Users wouldn't know where to get information > about the installer they just downloaded or where to report problems > with it.
Why wouldn't they know? They visit www.gimp.org to get their software, so it makes sense that they also look around on that same site if they want to get information or to report problems about what they just downloaded. Currently, even if they download the binary package from SourceForge, they will anyway have to go back to www.gimp.org if they want to get the information about how to use Bugzilla to report bugs. And since we discussed previously the opportunity to move the installer FAQ to gimp.org (if Jernej agrees), the users would find everything they need on the web site. > We should IMO keep a Download button and we should try to figure out the > user's operating system to make it as simple as possible to get to the > page where we explain that the GIMP team only provides the source code > and where we point people to the binary installer. We should also > encourage Jernej to provide a single installer for GTK+ and GIMP. Regardless of what we say about it, people do not care if the team provides only the source code. As I mentioned previously, the Windows package built by Jernej is considered as "the" GIMP package by most users and they probably do not know that the only official package from the team is the source code. And IMHO, they shouldn't even have to know. Most Linux users know that when a new package is released (GIMP or any other software), this usually means that a new version of the source code is out and they either have to build it on their own or to wait for their favorite distro to update their package. Windows users and MacOS X users do not have the same expectations: they expect to be able to download and install the software immediately. If the Windows binary package is not available, then the software is not released yet. Since Firefox was cited as an example at the beginning of this thread, I think that we should follow the same example and try to have installers for Windows and MacOS X (if possible) ready when we announce a new stable release. Other packages that are less popular than GIMP or Firefox follow the same model, so why couldn't we help our users in the same way? I know that this is a change compared to our current policy and it also raises some practical problems if we want to have packages ready on time (more pressure on Jernej...) but I think that it would be better for the (Windows) users than sticking to the current policy "we only release the source code". -Raphaël _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
