GNOME Human Interface Guidelines Being Updated For GTK4, Other Modern Features

[jacob]

I'm not blaming RedHat. At least, not entirely. They contribution for linux ecosystem is huge. Although not all of the contribution is positive, but I benefitted much from them. Qt and KDE? Yes, it's a pity. But with what GNOME's doing now, we don't have much choice, do we? If only they want to hear others opinion (and reduce their memory footprint).

There's one DE that's quite promising: Englightenment. It's blazing fast, have minimal memory footprint. Quite lack in feature department 'cause not enough man-power I think. But comparable or maybe more than XFCE feature-wise. I find that it's one of the earlier DE that try to have a convergence layout before everyone else. But the popularity is not that good. And IMO, the layout should have major overhaul (sorry, raster).

With GNOME we have the same choice as with any FOSS project: get involved, fork it or just accept what's given. One thing for example I've always disliked in Nautilus is that you can't preset a view (icons or list) for a specific folder. So for years now I've been using a patched version that adds this. That's how FOSS works, GNOME devs *could* be more responsive to the users but well, that's what we have. For the memory footprint I don't get your point: today's computers have 16G, 32G or more RAM, what's the problem?

As for Enlightenment I don't see much promise or even interest there, sorry. You might disagree of course.

[jacob]

Those were hilarious. Also, the argument about one big development tree which was supposedly a problem that went against the Unix philosophy. They didn't really study how BSD is developed didn't they .

Forget BSD. Unix itself has been developed as a single code base.

[jacob]

Imagine, our phone is our computer. Example: when we want to use it as a phone and want to browse though our contacts. The views, the way to interact with the UI (UX) is using a kind of a phone one (like iOS or Android). But then, when we dock our phone to a keyboard-mouse and monitor, the UX is for keyboard+mouse and monitor. Or when we use google spreadsheet on phone vs using it on desktop.

I agree that desktop and mobile have different use cases. But in the future, when we have good enough mobile phone, why not using it for desktop too? Heck, our high end phone SoC is more powerfull than pentium/i3. Why not using it for desktop use.

As you say, it's a matter of use cases, not hardware. The desktop is not going anywhere, for what it's being used for it's irreplaceable. If you can install actual desktop apps (NOT android apps) on a phone and use them on a desktop, that's all fine with me. But that's making my point that desktop and mobile should stay separate and be designed (and implemented) differently. Convergeance might perhaps be the thing for Instagram kids but honestly i DGAF about that. I don't see how productive software could start using a mobile-style UI and still remain productive.

[finalzone]

I'm not blaming RedHat. At least, not entirely. They contribution for linux ecosystem is huge. Although not all of the contribution is positive, but I benefitted much from them. Qt and KDE? Yes, it's a pity. But with what GNOME's doing now, we don't have much choice, do we? If only they want to hear others opinion (and reduce their memory footprint).

Claiming having lack of choice is subjective when posting in the topic dedicated on GNOME in this case. As a power user, you are free to build your own distribution with your favourite desktop environment thus in full control of your custom operating system. However, yoou have to respect other people's choice notably the distributors, developers and even users happy to run that particular desktop environment.
Frankly, ranting about a desktop environment some users have no interest to contribute in this topic highlights a sign of dishonestly. Effective way to provide a constructive criticism is in Bug/Enhancement tickets for that desktop environment instead of posting in a forum.

[delta_v]

I think, convergence is the ultimate ego, the ultimate hubris of an UI/UX designer.
One set of guidelines to rule them all, one vision that extends to all computer interactions, write once, run anyw^W^W^W^W

Different controls demand different usage flow of each and every application.
While touch is at least discrete, like mouse pointer, and not analog, like gamepad or HOTAS sticks or VR controllers, it still differs vastly in the amount of precision you can expect from a user.
Fingers are not transparent, a mouse pointer is much smaller than a fingertip and is usually designed to obstruct as little as possible.

No matter how good or detailed HIG are, they don't mean anything until a majority (by use time) of programs follow that convergence and implement different flows for different usage patterns.
As an extreme example, a shooter game to meet these convergence goals should seamlessly transition with the same gameplay between touch and KB+M. It is doable with compromises, but it's done very rarely.
And you need a mass buy-in from all the third parties for the convergence to work for the user.

That buy-in is possible only through the carrot and stick process.
Mainly through stick as everybody seems to like a different kind of carrots.

Apple is very well poised to try this because of their extensive control of the whole stack in their products.
Microsoft can leverage the access to its console ecosystem and force you to implement compatibility with Kinect it doesn't even sell anymore.
Gnome?.. Nah, not a chance. No control over any hardware stack, no leverage over the access to ecosystem, nothing.

So it goes.

[markus40]

4. . We're out of topic. Now the focus is about you, not GNOME.

Now I'm in the mood, lets continue with the focus on me.

I'm glad about what they do with Wayland. I'm of the opinion they learned what went wrong with X11 and took another path by making it very minimal with a focus on what it certainly must be, secure. Furthermore, I'm glad there many things left to be implemented by the 'window manager', if we have to give it a name, or should I say not implemented but integrated. Because the all-in-one singing and dancing implementation will halt innovation. The famous remote X11, did you ever use it? I did and went for XRDP because of the limitations. It was implemented at the beginning of X11 and never enhanced to include innovations in the field. I will quote something here which will illustrate how broken X11 was and let you figure out the implication for remote X11 for yourself.

The X protocol's text-rendering facilities do not support anti-aliasing and aren't used much these days. (I think the reason is that the X font protocol doesn't have any place for an alpha channel.)
GTK and Qt render text in the client using the FreeType library, getting a pixmap with an alpha channel as the result. If the X server supports the RENDER extension, the client can send that pixmap to the server to have it blended onto the display using its alpha channel. If the X server doesn't support RENDER, the client has to retrieve the region of the screen where the text is to be displayed (taking a small screenshot, basically), do the alpha blending client-side, and send the resulting opaque pixmap back to the X server to be displayed.

It was stuck in the 80s and not because it was good. So now the heavy lifting will be done with pipewire and the 'window manager' has to make sure it gets the permission to access the desktop for streaming. If something new comes along it can be integrated too or replace pipewire. X11 at the end was/is a Frankenstein monster with a large portion circumvented to keep it relevant in this century. And it did this very well. Thanks to, lets not forget the team behind Wayland. I'm still running it on my media PC/server and does its task well

I'm all for the minimalistic approach and let the innovation competitions begin. As I see it, this started with the dropping of the X11 font rendering, udev and then the removal of the ESD sound daemon and the implementation and integration of pulseaudio, Network-Manager in Gnome 2.x. The desktop doesn't have to solve those things. It needs to integrate them and as something new comes along, and it is good, it will replace the old. It is maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think Wayland learned from the past and is a continuation of what was started with udev (and HAL which was a bad idea quickly fixed), freetype, cairo, Network-Manager, pulseaudio, gstreamer, systemd and so on (all integrated not implemented by the desktop). And now we even see the result of this, by the phasing out of pulseaudio by pipewire and taking Jack and Video along on the ride. Maybe it will swallow gstreamer, who knows, the border is gray and that is fine because the desktop can pick nowadays. Without circumventing around things integrated in the display server. Like font engine, printer server, input drivers, audio and the kitchen sink. There already many things being swapped out underneath nowadays. It's called innovation. And no desktop has to wait for the others to do it, they can do it right away because it is possible now. Maybe Gtk will be superseded too, who knows. I'm not overly attached to any of it. But I can predict it will not be a C++ replacement. That is yesterday, nobody will swap things out for a C or C++ implementation.

I'm really appreciating Gnome 2.x as I did Gnome 1.x. But I see Gnome 2 as a catch-up to the 'modern' desktop as presented by Apple and Microsoft, which Linux was lacking, leaving the archaic *nix desktop behind. It introduced a lot of backend stuff to accomplish this. Gnome 3 I see as an evolution on this, enhance the desktop to the next level and make it our own. I respect the communities around KDE an XFCE. Don't like the dependency on all the dancing and singing QT for KDE. In my opinion, it lacks focus on what it wants to be, everything is no answer. Besides, it goes against me preferring modular. XFCE, it is not for me but admire their dedication. I don't see much relevance for it as an innovator in the desktop area, but that is me. The whole concept is very conservative. I'm overjoyed Xorg was founded to take XFree86 and drag it kicking and screaming into this century. No autoconfig for 12 years, in 2005, come on! As for Gnome, I think I see what they are doing, components to build a desktop freely to use by everybody. Ready to be replaced if something better comes along.

To me, Gnome is not about Gnome-shell, mutter, C, JavaScript, clutter, Wayland, GTK etc. They all can go away, and it still would be Gnome.
Gnome for me is about Gnome-shell, mutter, JavaScript, C, rust, clutter, Wayland, GTK, libinput, pulseaudio andnow pipewire, gstreamer, udev, dbus and now dbus-broker, flatpak, Cairo, freetype, OpenGL, Vulkan, systemd, Bluez, Network-manager, iwd and all other components, which can be swapped out if something better or new innovations will be developed without being stuck with an architecture that prevents the optimal integrations of those. Not being held back by anybody to do it.

Is that enough of me?

[markus40]

Forget BSD. Unix itself has been developed as a single code base.

So, Linux and systemd are truly GNU.

[markus40]

jacob TLDR Gnome Convergence is already here and it was so non-intrusive most people didn’t realize it.

I think many people don't realize what is coming together desktop wise at this moment through Gnome. They mostly concentrate on what is gone, instead of what is and will be gained. Or maybe they see it but don't like it and would like to be stuck in what was.

Maybe a too long stretch, but in a certain way it reminds me about how Microsoft lost the developer wars.

[JackLilhammers]

I'm glad about what they do with Wayland. I'm of the opinion they learned what went wrong with X11 and took another path by making it very minimal with a focus on what it certainly must be, secure.

I don't have anything against Wayland, as long as it reaches feature parity before being shipped by default with Ubuntu LTS, because otherwise it would be an awful user experience.
That said, I don't think security should be the primary focus. I'm not saying it should not be neglected, but if security breaks functionality than maybe there's something wrong at a design level. A silly example: a house with no openings is inherently safe, but less than useful

PS: About your previous experience with Kde, I'm sorry it happened, but I think you sort of missed my point. However it was not that important

PPS: Why would you say that Microsoft lost the developer wars?

[markus40]

I don't have anything against Wayland, as long as it reaches feature parity before being shipped by default with Ubuntu LTS, because otherwise it would be an awful user experience.

Of course, I'm agreeing. But out of curiosity, I'm using Wayland for more than a year and not noticing anything missing. I find it a pretty smooth ride. What is missing in your opinion?

IThat said, I don't think security should be the primary focus. I'm not saying it should not be neglected, but if security breaks functionality than maybe there's something wrong at a design level. A silly example: a house with no openings is inherently safe, but less than useful

Again, also true and something I have to deal with daily at work. But again what is lacking? Keep in mind I'm not the kitchen-sink type and don't think Wayland should solve everything X11 did (but did it really?).

PPS: Why would you say that Microsoft lost the developer wars?

I thought this was pretty obvious, not? They could not keep the developers on their platform with their tools and their environment. Most of the development nowadays is not for the desktop, it is not solely coupled with Microsoft development tools. Although they are undoubtedly excellent. Development is mostly for mobile and server backends. None of which are dominated by Microsoft. In 90s and 00 it was obvious they were trying hard to eradicate everything, not Microsoft related. Pretty aggressively too. Maybe the developer world was not in war with them, but Microsoft sure was in war with everybody else. They didn't succeed. Internet, (nginx, Apache, python, PHP), Firefox and later Chrome (JavaScript), and mobile (android, iPhone) happened. None of which controlled by Microsoft.