TUX Magazine Reader's Choice Awards [Was: Some criticisms of GNOME]

2005-08-15 Thread Jeff Waugh


> Here's an e-mail I got from the editor of tuxmag, which details some
> criticisms of the desktop. It raises some points that are interesting, and
> to which we should probably have an answer.

Meanwhile, vote in the TUX Magazine Reader's Choice Awards, here:

  http://www.tuxmagazine.com/TUX_Readers_Choice

- Jeff

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Re: Why Google funds open source development?

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary


Hi,

Quim Gil wrote:

Sorry for the wide topic, but considering thet GNOME has got a Google's
Summer of Code fund I think this is an appropriate list to ask.


It would perhaps have been better to ask Google... ;)


Why Google is funding open source development? Why Google is funding
GNOME? Just because we are so cool and smart? Just to deduce some taxes?


Google is a huge consumer of free software - Linux, Apache and Python. 
They have close ties to the Mozilla Foundation, buy advertising space in 
the interface of Firefox, and generally have lots of free software 
advocates working for them.


AFAIK, the idea is simply to "give something back". The size of the 
budget and the way that it is being executed may be unusual, but the 
idea itself of funding free software development isn't.



Has Google given a general explanation? Has Google explained to the
GNOME Foundation why is giving us money?

All the (very few) infos I've read about the Summer of Code talk about
free projects, young developers and money... but they don't mention why
Google is funding them.


I might be way off base with my answer, so I'll maybe let some people 
who know more than me jump in.


Cheers,
Dave.

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Re: Why Google funds open source development?

2005-08-15 Thread Jeff Waugh


> All the (very few) infos I've read about the Summer of Code talk about
> free projects, young developers and money... but they don't mention why
> Google is funding them.

Chris Dibona (who is running SoC and Google's Open Source efforts) says they
love Open Source, use Open Source, and want to give back. They just happen
to have buttloads of money with which to do so. :-)

- Jeff

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Why Google funds open source development?

2005-08-15 Thread Quim Gil
Sorry for the wide topic, but considering thet GNOME has got a Google's
Summer of Code fund I think this is an appropriate list to ask.

Why Google is funding open source development? Why Google is funding
GNOME? Just because we are so cool and smart? Just to deduce some taxes?

Has Google given a general explanation? Has Google explained to the
GNOME Foundation why is giving us money?

All the (very few) infos I've read about the Summer of Code talk about
free projects, young developers and money... but they don't mention why
Google is funding them.

Quim
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Re: In need for some text for a poster

2005-08-15 Thread Quim Gil
I think it's useful to be associated to day to "Linux desktop" but I
think it's more precise and possibly relevant (if not today, tomorrow)
the concept of "free desktop".

Quim

En/na Luis Villa ha escrit:
> On 8/10/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>>We would like to welcome you to Linux and the GNOME dekstop.
>>>Welcome to the Official Desktop of Happy People!
>>
>>Can we take out "Linux and"? GNOME isn't just for Linux, and I'd like to
>>see us establish our own brand presence (which might include "GNOME
>>applications on Windows" soon) Also, we talk about the GNOME Desktop
>>Environment higher up, here it's the GNOME desktop. I've changed both to
>>the GNOME Desktop.
> 
> 
> As an aside, while we do want very badly to establish our own brand,
> we also want to (as much as possible) be affiliated with 'linux
> desktop'- the reality is that no one goes around googling for 'gnome'
> (unless they want tiny men in hats), and lots of people have interest
> in the 'linux desktop', so we need to capitalize on that and make
> google love us on that phrase.
> 
> Luis
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Re: I need for some copywriting for gnome.org

2005-08-15 Thread Quim Gil
I like it. A couple of thoughts.

Mmmm GNOME itself is not defined. It shouldn't be assumed that people
landing in this page already knows that is a Linux desktop.

A Free and Universal Desktop

With a simple, straightforward interface that everyone can use, GNOME is
a free desktop that removes distractions and makes computing fun. No
need to worry about viruses, complexity, or incompatibilities- GNOME
Just Works.

I would remove "again". It adds a nostalgia feeling that is unknown by
most of "everyone" that a) don't know that computers were fun anytime or
b) don't think that computers aren't fun nowadays (even if they only use
proprietary software).



> Easy to get
> 
> With support from Novell, Red Hat, Sun and many others, getting GNOME
> on your Linux or Solaris desktop has never been easier- just [link to
> ~davyd/footware/]click here[/] to find out how to become a GNOME user
> today.

Do we need to put trademarks/companies here? I know GNOME owes them a
lot, but the risk of making others feel excluded are high. For instance,
what about Canonical/Ubuntu who is being a very popular GNOME showcase
for many new Linux users? I'm sure others may find other examples.

How about:

Easy to get

Becoming a GNOME user has never been easier. GNOME is the default
desktop [supported by many Linux distributions] and [Solaris].
distributions. Through its programming language GTK, GNOME is also
inside of [software used by millions] of users, also in other desktops.

Quim
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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Quim Gil

> You can't win a discussion with a journalist.

You can, by not discussing.

I would apply some Art of War here and I would create a "Get the facts
on GNOME"-like page with a link visible in the new homepage or the GNOME
introduction page. The objective of this page would be to summarize
GNOME's responses to the most usual subjects of criticism. The answers
won't be like "this is not true and we are right" (except for criticisms
that are objectively plain not true) but like "interesting, but in GNOME
we have thought about and we have decided that our option is better
because a b c".

Most of the criticism I've read about GNOME is related to things that
work different that the MS Windows / MacOS paradigms a normal citizen
acquires in the school, at work... I mean, this daughter that hates
GNOME and loves KDE has possibly a knowledge and an opinion about a
proprietary OS that will look "normal" to her. Her father too, I bet.

There is no usefulness to confront those paradigms directly, nor to get
into Slashdot battles. We have much better things to do. I would
acknowledge all criticism, think about it and discuss common answers to
be published in this page we can link to when falling in those discussions.

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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Travis Reitter
> How about just authoring a considered response or two in blogs / elsewhere, 
> then submitting your own story to Slashdot to the effect of "here's a 
> criticism of GNOME, and here's our considered response". Be open and honest 
> but also put the flamebaiting to rest.
> 
> Really, if anyone can get that worked up at the lack of control over the 
> colour of the window title bar then an adult response from you guys will only 
> make the article (assuming it's similar in tenor to the forwarded email) look 
> like a childish spat covering some interesting issues.

I think Tom's right, here. A direct, civil, and honest response would
probably be appreciated and hopefully prevent a few people from forming
an opinion based on some heated rant.

Speaking of the Slashdot crowd, would it be good to have a developer
volunteer to answer for one of "top 10 questions" posts? That way, we
could get a word in from our perspective, rather than unintentionally
encouraging speculation.

Or is most of this beyond a sanity threshold we should respond to?

-Travis

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Re: upcoming tuxmag article

2005-08-15 Thread Jeff Waugh


> Do we need a standard FUD response (like a standard FAQ)?

Guys, there was no FUD in this email, just a lot of standard Nick Petreley
attitude.

- Jeff

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Re: upcoming tuxmag article

2005-08-15 Thread Travis Reitter
On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 16:43 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> On 8/15/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I have gotten some notice that the next issue of tuxmag will contain a
> > negative article on GNOME - it's likely to get some slashdot-type
> > attention, so it might be an idea to be somewhat prepared.
> > 
> > I got the impression it's the usual "GNOME is ugly, file chooser sucks,
> > spatial sucks, where are all the preferences gone?" type article.
> 
> Gah. No other details?
> 
> That said, sounds like a perfect opportunity to figure out what we
> really want out of an organized 'fudsquad', and put it into action.
> 
> Luis

Do we need a standard FUD response (like a standard FAQ)?

-Travis

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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Claus Schwarm
Hi, Tom!

if it would be really just the color issue your suggestion looks
straighforward.

But did you ever noticed that bad press was stopped by a reply? 
Especially when a larger part of readers probably thinks there's some
truth in the critic?

A reply doesn't change behaviour so it doesn't fix the problem if
there's one. And, on the internet, it will make people believe their
comments will be read, and used. If that doesn't happen, it will just
lead to more frustration.

For example, the editor mail reads "I have ideas if you're interested."
Cool. If we don't ask for his ideas we're just a bunch of idiots that
won't listen. If we ask for his suggestion, but don't implement them,
we're a bunch of idiots that can't fix things even if the 'obvious'
solutions are given to them.

A reply will also look like a weak excuse for assumed errors (true or
not). The option of blogging about the critic will a) make the replier
look arrogant because it changed the place of discussion, and b) will
make replies inconsistant and weak.

And it will trigger more (bad) press because the press likes conflicts.

You can't win a discussion with a journalist.

Cheers,
Claus


On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:20:06 +0100
Tom Chance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> *Warning* KDE lurker jumping in... :o)
> 
> How about just authoring a considered response or two in blogs /
> elsewhere,  then submitting your own story to Slashdot to the effect
> of "here's a  criticism of GNOME, and here's our considered response".
> Be open and honest  but also put the flamebaiting to rest.
> 
> Really, if anyone can get that worked up at the lack of control over
> the  colour of the window title bar then an adult response from you
> guys will only  make the article (assuming it's similar in tenor to
> the forwarded email) look  like a childish spat covering some
> interesting issues.
> 
> *Back to hole from which I clambered*
> 
> Regards,
> Tom
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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Tom Chance
On Monday 15 Aug 2005 23:57, Claus Schwarm wrote:
> However, after talking a step back from the emotional affiliation with
> ones own work, it may reveal that there's some insight to be gained in
> the critic, even in the mail from the editor you posted.
>
> The more interesting question would be: Is GNOME able to deal with
> that or not? ;-)

*Warning* KDE lurker jumping in... :o)

How about just authoring a considered response or two in blogs / elsewhere, 
then submitting your own story to Slashdot to the effect of "here's a 
criticism of GNOME, and here's our considered response". Be open and honest 
but also put the flamebaiting to rest.

Really, if anyone can get that worked up at the lack of control over the 
colour of the window title bar then an adult response from you guys will only 
make the article (assuming it's similar in tenor to the forwarded email) look 
like a childish spat covering some interesting issues.

*Back to hole from which I clambered*

Regards,
Tom

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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Claus Schwarm
Hi,

that's no really a surprise, isn't it? Given the editor, and his well
known opinon about GNOME?

For those that have read no issue yet: Issue 4 spend three and a half
pages to explain how to add numlockx to the GNOME startup session, and
it was unneccessarily emotional. Of course, it was only the opinion of
'Mango Parfait'. It's not that hard to guess who's really writing the
column.

However, after talking a step back from the emotional affiliation with
ones own work, it may reveal that there's some insight to be gained in
the critic, even in the mail from the editor you posted.

The more interesting question would be: Is GNOME able to deal with
that or not? ;-)

Cheers,
Claus

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 22:56:55 +0200
David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Here's an e-mail I got from the editor of tuxmag, which details some 
> criticisms of the desktop. It raises some points that are interesting,
> 
> and to which we should probably have an answer.
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave.
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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Simos Xenitellis


Hi,
That was quite an interesting e-mail. Thanks for forwarding.

How do we "deal" with it?
Well, imagine the new version of OpenOffice.org which does not have the 
toolbars with those bold/italics/underline buttons,
the left-right-center-justify buttons for paragraphs, allowing you to 
change fonts and font styles.

You could only get them back if you tinkered the .config files.
How would you feel about that? Would you be terrified? Dismayed?

Why would you want to remove these basic buttons?
The reason is, you should use styles when writing documents, rather than 
setting properties manually by changing the font size or making bold.
If you want to make a heading, you use Heading 1 style. If you want it a 
bit different, change the style for Heading 1.

If such a style does not exist, make a new one for your document.
Doesn't this take time?
If you learn to do this the proper way, document creation would be much 
more appealing.
But doesn't it take time? Well, I have seen my colleagues (in different 
departments) that use MS Word for the thesis,
they end up with a huge document with no styles at all. They manually do 
the table of contents (!), the table of figures and table of tables.
The bibliography is a similar mess. If you go into detail in the file, 
you find all sort of wrong styling that makes the work unmanageable.
In departments that use ancient scripts (like ancient greek), they still 
(2005) use 8-bit fonts that the english characters are replaced with the 
ancient script.
They do not use Unicode, not even the way that WinXP supports. Imagine 
Google trying to index those files! It will crash!

Just to repeat, this is PhD thesis level we are talking about.

What's the moral of the story?
It's lame to criticize something and reject it simply because you could 
not figure out how to make it work.
When I first tried spatial nautilus, I felt it was weird. I tried 
however to use it for a few days; there should be something positive out 
of it.
After those few days I figured out that it makes sense. You need to have 
shallow hierarchies (Documents, and in there only put subdirectories).
You wouldn't use sparial nautilus to navigate to system directories. If 
you want to browse files, it's Foot/Browse files.
Are GNOME developers always correct then? Well, it's an issue of the 
GNOME community to market the new functionality to the end-users,

and I believe we are working towards this direction.

Cheers,
Simos

David Neary wrote:



Hi all,

Here's an e-mail I got from the editor of tuxmag, which details some 
criticisms of the desktop. It raises some points that are interesting, 
and to which we should probably have an answer.


Cheers,
Dave.

Tux Editor wrote:


David,

The numbers come from Evans Data Corp.  And it's a no-brainer to see
that the numbers reflect how real people think.  Without ANY help from
me, my 11 year old daughter jumped right into KDE and had no problems at
all using it and customizing it, right down to the way the panel looks
and works.  She hates GNOME with a passion, partly because it is a total
enigma to her, and partly because it's so darned ugly.  Okay, that's
just a matter of taste, but I happen to think it's ugly, too.
Mango rips GNOME a new one in the next issue for many of the reasons my
daughter hates it.  I used to have fun with venom, but now that Mango
provides that style I let her do it and I can take a different approach
to my columns.  But even if I'm kinder and gentler these days
(sometimes, anyway), I must agree with Mango on some things.  For
example, I totally agree with her upcoming statement that the file
open/save dialog (I call it the file picker) is worse than bamboo shoots
under fingernails.  I can't imagine anything less intuitive than a
GNOME/GTK file open/save dialog.  That's one of the things that really
made my daughter hate GNOME and GTK-based apps that use that dialog. 
She gets totally lost when she has to deal with that dialog.


The GNOME interface is also inconsistent in the way it handles 
things. I won't go into detail now, but GNOME often makes things easy 
for a user

at the cost of limiting what GNOME can do afterward.  Mango hints about
one of those cases, so read her column if you want an example.  Her
example also points out that KDE is too difficult in some ways, too, and
I agree with her 100%.  KDE is far from perfect.

I think the spacial Nautilus is nuts, and this is coming from a person
who used to love OS/2 -- and the OS/2 workplace shell worked almost the
same way as Nautilus works now.  I can deal with spacial Nautilus, but
IMO the problem isn't the concept.  The problem is that the people who
went with it jumped into it too quickly.  They didn't think it through
and provide options for those who wouldn't like it the way THEY liked
it.  For example, what about those users who don't want to keep opening
new windows on the desktop?   Yes, I know you can FINALLY use a GUI way
to change this behavior NOW.  But when spacial Na

Re: I need for some copywriting for gnome.org

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/15/05, Rob Sharp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 8/16/05, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Easy to get
> >
> > With support from Novell, Red Hat, Sun and many others, getting GNOME
> > on your Linux or Solaris desktop has never been easier- just [link to
> > ~davyd/footware/]click here[/] to find out how to become a GNOME user
> > today.
> 
> It's slightly pedantic, but it's always better to avoid 'click here'
> on links (WCAG 13.1, guideline gurus!) as the link has no context (for
> search engines etc.). 

Yeah, I knew that, just... it was awkward :)

> Perhaps we could use:
> 
> With support from Novell, Red Hat, Sun and many others, getting GNOME
> on your Linux or Solaris desktop has never been easier. [link to
> ~davyd/footware/]Find out how to become a GNOME user today![/]

Much better. That was sort of whimsy anyway, since I need to work with
Davyd to get that page more usable before we pimp it from the front
page.

Luis
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Re: Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread Jeff Waugh


> >-Nick

Keep in mind that this Nick is Nicholas Petreley, who has "a bit of a
reputation".

I spoke to some of the Tux Magazine people at LWE, and have contact details
for non-Nick people at Tux Magazine who I should talk to. Will report back
later.

- Jeff

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Re: Yet Another Poster

2005-08-15 Thread Andreas Nilsson

Luis Villa wrote:


On 8/10/05, Andreas Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


Did another poster to match the Official Desktop of Happy People one.
It seems like I didn't have support for thaiwanese, so that's currently
three squares in the png. Will fix it later. Hope to do them as pdf
soon, not sure how though. Scribus svg support is not satisfying enough yet.
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.png
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.svg
   



If we want to change the texts, how best to do that?

Luis

P.S. Has anyone given any thought to how to i18n-ize these? Danilo, is
it possible to i18n-ize svg? :)

 

This is just a sketch, I'm planning on making it in Scribus later on, so 
that I can produce a simple pdf, easy to download and easy to print. 
I18n would be done to the scribus-file I imagine, perhaps in different 
layers.

I will put the source up real soon.

You could use the svg aswell though, if you really, really want to.
- Andreas
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Re: Yet Another Poster

2005-08-15 Thread Simos Xenitellis

Luis Villa wrote:


On 8/10/05, Andreas Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


Did another poster to match the Official Desktop of Happy People one.
It seems like I didn't have support for thaiwanese, so that's currently
three squares in the png. Will fix it later. Hope to do them as pdf
soon, not sure how though. Scribus svg support is not satisfying enough yet.
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.png
http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.svg
   



If we want to change the texts, how best to do that?

Luis

P.S. Has anyone given any thought to how to i18n-ize these? Danilo, is
it possible to i18n-ize svg? :)
 

SVG is an XML file and I believe that intl-tools should be able to work 
with them in either of two ways:

1. Use xmlpo/poxml to extract the text, localise, then put back.
2. Put placeholders in the SVG file for the content to be localised and 
a preprocessor would generate a .po file from the


poster-language.svg.in file. Requires putting manually those placeholders for 
each version of .svg file.

Of course, the final work goes to the person actually doing this. :) Danilo?


In addition, Inkscape can be invoked from the command-line to do simple 
processing such as exporting to PNG.
This would help tremendously, as the generation of logos/posters can be 
fully automated.
See the command-line parameters: 
http://www.inkscape.org/doc/inkscape-man.html

For example,

$ inkscape poster-language.svg --export-png=poster-language.png -w990 -h1265

It's crying to be automated.

I had a look at

http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.png
The resolution is not high so I can only guess that sodipodi does not deal 
correctly with complex scripts.
For example, notice the word after Swedish (Svenska); there is an "accent" on 
its own that did not combine with the rest of the glyphs. If you can pinpoint those 
misplaced accents, you can pass as an expert in complex scripts :).
I re-exported the same SVG file with Inkscape 0.42 and it appears to works 
better:
http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/~simos/misc/posterlanguage-inkscape.png

All in all, the tools work and work well.

Simos


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Some criticisms of GNOME

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary


Hi all,

Here's an e-mail I got from the editor of tuxmag, which details some 
criticisms of the desktop. It raises some points that are interesting, 
and to which we should probably have an answer.


Cheers,
Dave.

Tux Editor wrote:

David,

The numbers come from Evans Data Corp.  And it's a no-brainer to see
that the numbers reflect how real people think.  Without ANY help from
me, my 11 year old daughter jumped right into KDE and had no problems at
all using it and customizing it, right down to the way the panel looks
and works.  She hates GNOME with a passion, partly because it is a total
enigma to her, and partly because it's so darned ugly.  Okay, that's
just a matter of taste, but I happen to think it's ugly, too. 


Mango rips GNOME a new one in the next issue for many of the reasons my
daughter hates it.  I used to have fun with venom, but now that Mango
provides that style I let her do it and I can take a different approach
to my columns.  But even if I'm kinder and gentler these days
(sometimes, anyway), I must agree with Mango on some things.  For
example, I totally agree with her upcoming statement that the file
open/save dialog (I call it the file picker) is worse than bamboo shoots
under fingernails.  I can't imagine anything less intuitive than a
GNOME/GTK file open/save dialog.  That's one of the things that really
made my daughter hate GNOME and GTK-based apps that use that dialog. 
She gets totally lost when she has to deal with that dialog.


The GNOME interface is also inconsistent in the way it handles things. 
I won't go into detail now, but GNOME often makes things easy for a user

at the cost of limiting what GNOME can do afterward.  Mango hints about
one of those cases, so read her column if you want an example.  Her
example also points out that KDE is too difficult in some ways, too, and
I agree with her 100%.  KDE is far from perfect.

I think the spacial Nautilus is nuts, and this is coming from a person
who used to love OS/2 -- and the OS/2 workplace shell worked almost the
same way as Nautilus works now.  I can deal with spacial Nautilus, but
IMO the problem isn't the concept.  The problem is that the people who
went with it jumped into it too quickly.  They didn't think it through
and provide options for those who wouldn't like it the way THEY liked
it.  For example, what about those users who don't want to keep opening
new windows on the desktop?   Yes, I know you can FINALLY use a GUI way
to change this behavior NOW.  But when spacial Nautilus was introduced,
the only way to change the default behavior was to change a registry
setting.  Now THAT is a total lack of foresight.  


But wait, there's more.  Right-click to use the browser mode?  Totally
unintuitive. Windows makes that mistake, too. 


But wait, there's even more.  Shift-double-click to close the previous
window?  How intuitive is that?!?!?  Why not simply provide an OBVIOUS
global option (a checkbox in an obvious place) that tells Nautilus to
close the previous window when you navigate to another folder?  If I
recall correctly, even the OS/2 designers provided that option.  Problem
solved -- all it took was a little forethought, which is something the
GNOME developers totally lack. 


Speaking of which, I don't know if you still can't use the shift key to
close the previous window when you set GNOME to open things with a
single-click, but that's yet another example of GNOME developers lacking
forethought.  Some people like to single-click things to activate them,
and GNOME lets you switch to single-click.  Yet you couldn't
shift-single-click a folder to open a new one and close the previous
one.  Didn't anyone consider that people work differently than they do? 
That's just really bad QA.


But what probably irks me the most about GNOME is that it forces you to
choose between what OTHERS have decided your desktop should look like. 
This is the same as "Didn't anyone consider that people work differently

than they do?"

You have a tiny bit of tweaking room (you can mix and match pre-defined
icons with pre-defined window styles and pre-defined widget styles), but
you can't do something as simple as pick the color of window title bar. 
I've heard GNOMEies and GTKies say that this is deliberate design

decision.  It keeps people from doing something stupid like making the
window title bar white and the text white (and therefore make the window
title text unreadable).   I'll believe that excuse when I believe in the
easter bunny.  Face it.  GTK simply wasn't built to let normal humans
customize things like the color of the window title bar, and it would be
a bear to go back and re-write GTK to work that way.  I suspect nobody
wants to do that, so it stays the way it is, and people keep relying on
the excuses for the dumb behavior.  I'd be much more kind to the
GNOME/GTK authors if they'd just be honest and admit they screwed up and
had no real foresight when they built GTK.  The exuse is lame.  These
are computer

Re: upcoming tuxmag article

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary


Hi,

I'll forward on the mail from the editor (he said I could, so...

It contains some hints about the article, with some of his personal 
opinions.


Cheers,
Dave.

Luis Villa wrote:

On 8/15/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I have gotten some notice that the next issue of tuxmag will contain a
negative article on GNOME - it's likely to get some slashdot-type
attention, so it might be an idea to be somewhat prepared.

I got the impression it's the usual "GNOME is ugly, file chooser sucks,
spatial sucks, where are all the preferences gone?" type article.



Gah. No other details?

That said, sounds like a perfect opportunity to figure out what we
really want out of an organized 'fudsquad', and put it into action.

Luis


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Re: upcoming tuxmag article

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/15/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have gotten some notice that the next issue of tuxmag will contain a
> negative article on GNOME - it's likely to get some slashdot-type
> attention, so it might be an idea to be somewhat prepared.
> 
> I got the impression it's the usual "GNOME is ugly, file chooser sucks,
> spatial sucks, where are all the preferences gone?" type article.

Gah. No other details?

That said, sounds like a perfect opportunity to figure out what we
really want out of an organized 'fudsquad', and put it into action.

Luis
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Re: In need for some text for a poster

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/10/05, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > We would like to welcome you to Linux and the GNOME dekstop.
> > Welcome to the Official Desktop of Happy People!
> 
> Can we take out "Linux and"? GNOME isn't just for Linux, and I'd like to
> see us establish our own brand presence (which might include "GNOME
> applications on Windows" soon) Also, we talk about the GNOME Desktop
> Environment higher up, here it's the GNOME desktop. I've changed both to
> the GNOME Desktop.

As an aside, while we do want very badly to establish our own brand,
we also want to (as much as possible) be affiliated with 'linux
desktop'- the reality is that no one goes around googling for 'gnome'
(unless they want tiny men in hats), and lots of people have interest
in the 'linux desktop', so we need to capitalize on that and make
google love us on that phrase.

Luis
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Re: I need for some copywriting for gnome.org

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary



Luis Villa wrote:

How does that fit?


+1 from me.

Dave.

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Re: Yet Another Poster

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/10/05, Andreas Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Did another poster to match the Official Desktop of Happy People one.
> It seems like I didn't have support for thaiwanese, so that's currently
> three squares in the png. Will fix it later. Hope to do them as pdf
> soon, not sure how though. Scribus svg support is not satisfying enough yet.
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.png
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/poster-language.svg

If we want to change the texts, how best to do that?

Luis

P.S. Has anyone given any thought to how to i18n-ize these? Danilo, is
it possible to i18n-ize svg? :)
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upcoming tuxmag article

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary


Hi,

I have gotten some notice that the next issue of tuxmag will contain a 
negative article on GNOME - it's likely to get some slashdot-type 
attention, so it might be an idea to be somewhat prepared.


I got the impression it's the usual "GNOME is ugly, file chooser sucks, 
spatial sucks, where are all the preferences gone?" type article.


Cheers,
Dave.

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Re: marketing-list Digest, Vol 12, Issue 6

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/10/05, Andreas Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Andreas Nilsson wrote:

> >> Maybe not so offtopic, is there any theme on the meaning of "mood"
> >> about this release? Maybe we could use it to give the whole artwork
> >> the same mood, I don't know if it's already done, or if the "The
> >> official desktop of happy people" is exactly what I'm talking about.
> >> Hope I'm not too confusing, this english thing is really dificult to
> >> me, sorry :D
> >>
> >>
> > Just put my work here:
> > http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/gnomelivecd/
> > Feel free to modify and/or criticize. I would love to have a look at
> > your suggestions aswell.
> >
> > About mood, yeah, we really needs to work on that one. This stuff is
> > very blue and so is osx, kde and to some extent windows too so maybe
> > we needs to be the green, red or purple desktop in order to stick out.
> > - Andreas
> 
> Did some experiments with green instead of blue and some composition
> based on some comments on irc.
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/gnomelivecd/bootsplash-alt.png
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/gnomelivecd/background-alt.png
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/gnomelivecd/gnomesplash.png
> 
> Is there some graphics I've forgotten about?

Those seem like the key ones. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the
curves- maybe I just have subconscious assocations between them and
Novell :) At any rate, the artists should get together in a cabal and
pick one for me :)

Luis
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Re: Looking for some pointing

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
On 8/12/05, YetZero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Here, I have my entries. I tried sending them last week, but I had to
> wait for moderator confirmation to send the images to the list as an
> attachment. Well, they didn´t come at all, and I found where to upload
> them. Here they are:
> 
> http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/1740/gnomelivecdwallpaper10248re.png
> http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/9638/gnomelivecdsplash4ut.png
> http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/9227/gnomelivecdbootsplash6sq.png

I really like these! I'm not sure why exactly, but they seem less
overwhelmingly blue than Andreas's mockups, which is really nice.

I have no idea how I should decide; suggestions from the artist types welcome :)

> By the way, I added "2.12" to the pictures... but now I'm wondering if
> that's the release that's going to be on the live cd... Please correct
> me if I'm wrong...

That is the right release.

Luis
 
> 2005/8/8, Luis Villa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > On 8/8/05, Andreas Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > I've been working on the liveCD-artwork-stuff and will probably have a
> > > whole set done in a couple of days.
> >
> > Great!
> >
> > YetZero, I don't have a list offhand, but there is a rough list of needs 
> > here:
> > http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLiveCd_2fToDo#head-308e17d2200a17ac8205cdd6c3cf19b32bfb8c26
> >
> > > Nothing wrong with something to
> > > choose from though, so I would love to see some stuff by YetZero.
> > > Something that I feel we need is more posters for people to put up on
> > > universites and for booths at conferences and events.
> >
> > Totally! And I still owe you a first draft of some poster text :/
> >
> > Luis
> >
> > > Luis Villa wrote:
> > >
> > > >Well, I'm just one guy, but I'm looking for a new splash and new
> > > >background for the liveCD. The colors should go nicely with the new
> > > >default theme, and the foot should be prominent, but other than
> > > >that... I'm real flexible :)
> > > >
> > > >Luis
> > > >
> > > >On 7/14/05, YetZero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>Hi everyone, I'm new to this list, and would like to help. I saw in
> > > >>the main page that some graphic designers are needed, and I'm one, so
> > > >>can someone point me in something that I could help with? I'd really
> > > >>like to be useful, but I'm not coder, so better doing my stuff, that's
> > > >>graphics. Suggestions, anyone?
> > > >>
> > > >>Excuse my english.
> > > >>--
> > > >>marketing-list mailing list
> > > >>marketing-list@gnome.org
> > > >>http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > >
> > > --
> > > marketing-list mailing list
> > > marketing-list@gnome.org
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
> > >
> >
> 
> 
> --
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Re: I need for some copywriting for gnome.org

2005-08-15 Thread Luis Villa
> And here is the mockup at it's current state:
> http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/temp/gnomeorgfront-prop3.png

I like the mockup. Here is a try at cleaning up the language:
=

Simple and Universal

With a simple, straightforward interface that everyone can use, GNOME
removes distractions and makes computing fun again. No need to worry
about viruses, complexity, or incompatibilities- GNOME Just Works.

Powerful and Flexible

GNOME is not just for our millions of users- GNOME is also a powerful
technology platform for developers to write advanced, sophisticated
applications on. [maybe include a link here to a fancy page showing
the 'greatest hits of GTK/GNOME', like gimp, inkscape, sabayon,
evolution, gok, abiword/gnumeric, firefox/ooo, etc.?]

Easy to get

With support from Novell, Red Hat, Sun and many others, getting GNOME
on your Linux or Solaris desktop has never been easier- just [link to
~davyd/footware/]click here[/] to find out how to become a GNOME user
today.

==
How does that fit?
Luis
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Re: GNOME Logo Font

2005-08-15 Thread David Neary


Hi,

Máirín Duffy wrote:

I added 6 more variations using fonts that I *think* are ok to use -
Nimbus Sans L Regular, Grotesk Bold came with a GPL license... I'm not
100% on the others...

re-load to see: http://www.linuxgrrl.com/gnome-logos/


Great stuff :) You go away for a weekend, and come back to this...

I also like Bitstream Vera Sans (Bold), but a close second (and closer 
to the current one in form) is URW Gothic L (Demi).


Cheers,
Dave.

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Re: GNOME Logo Font

2005-08-15 Thread YetZero
What about the luxi font family? They look good, and they come in some distros.

2005/8/15, Quim Gil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Just my votes on this discussion.
> 
> - GNOME shouldn't use any proprietary font in the logo, website and any
> documents generate having available free fonts.
> 
> - Bitstream Vera Sans for the logo.
> 
> Quim
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Re: I need for some copywriting for gnome.org

2005-08-15 Thread Andreas Nilsson

Quim Gil wrote:


I like this homepage. We definitely need to make it more updatable and
with just the neded text, with a single word more.

I would replace "Technology" by "Depelopment" in the navigation bar.

Quim

En/na Andreas Nilsson ha escrit:
 


I am once again in need of people who can actually write. This time it's
   



 


The stuff in the navigation bar is based on this:
http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fWebsiteUpdates

Check out the community and technology further down the page. I think 
this actually makes sense, because technology is where you go if you 
want to know something about the GNOME tech like GTK, HIG, white papers 
and straight facts. Community is where you go if you want to directly 
start contributing to GNOME and don't know how.

- Andreas
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GNOME Journal: Next edition Sep, the 15th

2005-08-15 Thread Claus Schwarm
Hi!

The next edition of the GNOME Journal is due on September, the 15th.

Deadline for submitting articles is September, the 1st.

If any member on the list thought of writing something, has an
half-finished article on his hard-disk, or knows somebody who has,
please let me know.

I'm also looking for somebody who is wiling to write an article about
the collaboration feature in GNOME Office. A technical paper is
available; I just need someone to rewrite it into a more suitable form.

Thanks in advance for any submisson!

Claus
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Re: GNOME Logo Font

2005-08-15 Thread Quim Gil
Just my votes on this discussion.

- GNOME shouldn't use any proprietary font in the logo, website and any
documents generate having available free fonts.

- Bitstream Vera Sans for the logo.

Quim
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