Re: How to deal with unwilling devs?

On 30.07.09 07:46:13, Markus wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 29. Juli 2009 23:53:03 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> 
> > Thats his right, its his application (at least partly) and he can do
> > whatever he wants with it.
> 
> No, it's not. Not even close. Thomas McGuire is the main dev. The name of 
> that 
> guy isn't even in KMail's credits window.

Guess I need to do my homework better then :) I suggest then that you
re-open the bugreport and Cc Thomas to get some input from him.

> Other than that: What's even the point of a usability team if nobody
> needs to care?

To give advice to the developers and to explain why a certain kind of
GUI is bad for the users. The developer is still free to accept that or
not.
 
> > You're kidding right? That bugreport has been filed about 10 days ago.
> > Thats not even close to "ignore completely".
> 
> Enough time to at least change the bug status from UNCONFIRMED to NEW.

That would mean someone had the time to read it and check the the thread
you linked. Apparently nobody had the time yet to do that.
 
> > Thats easy: Start a discussion on their mailinglist involving usability
> > folks.
> 
> Why does the usability team run behind every other team? Why discuss a matter 
> here first just to have the same discussion again there?

Because the relevant developers weren't involved and couldn't give their
input on why their application is special. There's no shoe that fits
all, you have to accept that some apps are special.

> > Neither the HIG (note the word "Guideline" in it) nor any person
> > can enforce such changes.
> 
> It is possible to enforce bug fixes

How do you plan to do that? If you commit the change, the developer that
disagree's can simply revert it. Of course you can play ping-pong until
either one of you gives up - or until the end of all. But thats pretty
stupid thing to do IMHO.

> Having the same discussion over and over again on the mailing list of each 
> app 
> that's affected of a usability issue is one way to encourage the devs, but 
> with several hundred applications in KDE's SVN that way is hardly efficient.

Sure, but I'm also sure you don't need to have the same discussion with
each and every app developer. Some will simply accept it because their
application is just a "standard one" and not special enough to warrant a
differing behaviour.
 
Andreas

-- 
Stay the curse.
_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@xxxxxxx
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability