Re: Suggestion Box? ATTN: Dre

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> On Fri, 16 May 2003 06:02 am, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> > But, to my question: Where is the suggestion box?  And. no I don't
> > mean submitting a 'feature request' bugs.  Somewhere KDE needs to be
> > designed and suggestions need to be discussed.  I realize that this is
> > contrary to what I see.  What I see seems antithetical to Open Source
> > -- a rather closed and insular world where those in that world know
> > that they are right about everything and do not want any input from
> > the outside; certainly not from users.

The ratio (useful?) suggestions to useful code is about 20:1. If I would have 
to follow up on all suggestions made I would not have any time left to write 
any code. In fact, many KDE developers don't have time enough to read a 
mailinglist like [email protected] at all. If you can't backup suggestions 
with working code the chances are very small that they get picked up. There 
are things you can do to improve your odds though:

* Be very specific. 
Bad example: Drag and drop should be improved. 
Good example: When dragging files from konqueror to kpresenter, kpresenter 
should honour remote urls in addition to local files.

* Make sure you are talking about the code/design/functionality that is in CVS 
HEAD. Suggestions related to code that has already been redesigned since are 
a waste of time (yours and mine).

* Make sure you understand the current design. Some files in today's CVS have 
had more than 500 revisions. The design and code of today's CVS may very well 
be the result of a very long process (or not) in which many pitfalls have 
been identified and solved. You need to understand those issues in order to 
suggest improvements that are indeed improvements and not regressions into 
mistakes of the past. (We are bad in documenting design btw, you can help by 
writing documents that describe the current design)

* Provide input on issues that are being under active development. Especially 
with libraries, once code has been released we are very constrained in the 
changes that can be made to it. Likewise, close to a scheduled release it is 
often not feasible to make design changes. Make suggestions are appropriate 
for the current development phase. 
Good example: KDE's menu system is currently being redesigned. See the draft 
spec on 
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu/draft/menu-spec/menu-spec.html
and e.g. the following thread 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/xdg-list/2003-May/msg00035.html Now is an 
excellent time for constructive feedback on those issues.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Waldo
- -- 
[email protected] -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- [email protected]
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