[subscriptions] Re: Ok, I know this was touched on before..

[Lionel Laratte]

Well, I'll throw my hat in the ring and say that I think maybe the
iconbox should have an option to show text (the name of the app) under
the icon just to help differentiate between minimized apps.  I'm not a
programmer so I don't know how hard that is to do.  I imagine it would
also look somewhat elegant, if I may go so far.

In other news, my wife came back from her business trip over the weekend
with the Linux laptop.  She used Xfce and was productive with it.  Her
only complaint: I had loaded an AbiWord rc and it did some weird things
a couple of times.  However, she said the laptop was "peppy" and helped
her.  Thanks again, Xfce crew.

Lionel

-----Original Message-----
From: xfce-bounces at xfce.org [mailto:xfce-bounces at xfce.org] On Behalf Of
Tim D. Lane
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 3:49 PM
To: 'XFce is a lightweight desktop environment for various UNIX
systems.'
Subject: RE: [subscriptions] Re: Ok, I know this was touched on before..


On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 23:56 Biju Chack wrote:

>I'm not the maintainer of the iconbox, but I think I can answer for if
I
>said 'NO!'. If an application doesn't set a proper icon, it's a bug in
the
>application. Why should *we* fix somebody else's bug?

*We* should not fix somebody else's bug, but we do need to be aware of
the problems or limitations of such applications.  The usability of an
iconbox is severely limited when several icons appear the same.
Obviously, there has to be some means of differentiating between the
icons.

>You should realise that each additional line of code that we add
produces
>one more place where a bug could occur.

Conversely, adding a needed line of code may make the application more
robust. :)

>Increasing the size of the code
>just makes it more difficult to maintain.>

True, but the overriding question is whether or not the additional code
is necessary or preferable to accomplish the intended objective.  In
this particular case, I suspect the code and database necessary to
implement alternative icons would add too much overhead to the system,
which would be contrary to the Xfce objective.  OTOH, a popup tool-tip
with the name of the program would solve the usability problem with
minimal additional overhead.  Omitting the tool-tip, or a similar
solution, would make the iconbox of little value.

Just my two-cents (substitute any manner of coinage) worth. :)

Tim Lane










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