[Design-team] Hands-on: new single-window mode makes GIMP less gimpy

[Bill Nottingham]

Seth Vidal (skvidal at fedoraproject.org) said: 
> >> Afaict nothing done on the linux desktop  in the last 10 yrs has
> >> been anything other than a copy of whatever windows and osx did
> >> before.
> >
> > gnome-shell certainly doesn't look like Windows or Mac to me. Neither
> > does Moblin, for that matter. (Neither did the original specs of
> > Enlightenment, and that was a long time ago.)
> 
> Gnome shell is your example? Have you used a macbook recently?

The last time I used it Exposé wasn't there - that obviously shows
similarities. But if it was truly following OSX, I would think there'd
be more of a dock, less of a focus on workspaces as top level objects,
less use of the contextual menu for picking applications.)

But, meh. It's certainly trying something *new* over just maintaining
the old. And I want to be willing to try and fail rather than just
muddle along - and those that try need to be able to make choices. I
would hope it's a given point that you can't do the *best* design for
any one particular usage case without making choices at some point. If
we fail to make any choices, we'll be equally mediocre at everything.
(While that may be a goal, it's not my goal.) So we need a framework for
people to be able to make those choices.

At our current level of engagement, volunteers, and resources, I don't
know that we can handle the sort of combinatorial explosion if all
groups make separate choices which all need to be supported. That's why
I feel it may be healthy to make some choices as a whole project. If
we can find a way to make choices at a lower level while still keeping
the project maintainable, that's great too.

We already do, for the most part, make choices at a product-wide level.
We've chosen that we don't want to support those who want a 3 (or 5, or
7) year lifespan for the product. We've chosen that we're not basing the
world on zypper, or apt. We've implicitly chosen from a desktop target
audience that nobody is targeting those who want to run TWM and xdm.

Bill