KDE Traffic #69 is Out

KDE Traffic #69 is here, chock full of news and waiting for you. Topics include usability issues, Kafka progress, KDE apps in ECMAScript, importing KDevelop projects into KDE CVS and more.

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Comments

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

That's all...

Thanks for all the hard work KDE devs!

by Anonymous (not verified)

I really think that Ingo's comment about "such annoying messages" is what set that user of to send such a rude reply. However, that does not mean that Ingo deserved to be called a fuckhead. I kinda feel that Ingo was the first one to be rude in that exchange. He could have simply said that feature requests are to be directed toward bugs.kde.org and left it at that. Perhaps if he tries to watch comments like this in the future such posts could be avoided in the future. Still, though, Ingo does not deserve to be called a fuckhead.

Keep up the good work. I may be silent on lists but I show my appriciation every day by the fact that when my computer is on, I have kmail running.

by André Somers (not verified)

Yes, and no. On the one hand, these kind of messages in devel lists *are* annoying. Still, a more polite re-direction to b.k.o. would be good for users that don't know about that. By Simon's second message however, it becomes perfectly obvious he _does_ know about b.k.o., and still posts his requests in the devel list. Now that is truely annoying. So, you are IMO right in that it would be good to try to be really polite and redirect people to b.k.o. (remember that not everybody has a good command of English, so they may have inadvertently written the message in a way that others see as impolite). However, we must not forget that the real impolite a**hole here is Simon, who knew perfectly well what he was doing and had no right whatsoever calling Ingo names or making demands.

In general: if you want a feature that bad, you should make it yourself, pay someone to make it for you or use a system that meets your needs better.

While I agree that Ingo was a bit rude, the poster was far worse. When you are putting in hard hours, it gets tiring to hear ppl complain about what you do, esp. if you are doing it for free. Ingo snapped back and the psoter got downright nasty.The poster could have, and should have, refrained a bit and understand that others can be under stress.
On an earlier posting, I got it into with another developer here and simply refrained. It is much easier in the long run on everybody.

If you post in the wrong place, and get told about "such annoying messages", then you can take that as being told off, but hardly insulted.
Hence hopefully you try not to post in the wrong forum from then on.

by Stephen Douglas (not verified)

To be honest, Ingos first response was hardly perfect. If you want people to go to b.k.o. to file bugs, then a polite reply telling the user that would have been sufficient (yes, it later transpired that the user knew about b.k.o.)

Granted, the users reply was out of order and I am not trying to defend that. But his original post wasn't that bad.

by Robert Cole (not verified)

I find this all fairly interesting because I've had many good and bad experiences with the open source community as well as the same types of issues with closed source.

For me the answer is simple, if you don't like it leave. :) sounds harsh but it works for me. I had a bad experence with bug reporting with openoffice and was basically told by the devs to f*** off and my report was worthless.

Interestingly I had almost the exact same experience with thekompany.com when reporting an issue with Aethera. Being told that by a company I've bought product from is harder to take I can tell you.

My point is closed or open you can get the same response. I choose to deal with it silently (well until now) by just simply not helping out those projects by doing any bug reports on those products.

BTW, my reports to those products were very polite and respectful yet I got a harsh response in both cases.

Robert

by Superstoned (not verified)

internet isnt real life... Expressing yourself in mails/fora etc isnt like in real life. I've seen alot of flamewars (who hasn't?) and they all come down on one thing: misunderstanding emotions.

Emotions can't be expressed very well digitally. Most of the time, ppl overreact. Emotional reactions seem stronger if read - so if an reaction is written a little irritated, ppl percieve it to be very rude. I think thats the most important problem online communication does face. I'm thinkin' bout doing an investigation on this topic (I study psychology), to measure to what extend emotions seem to be 'enlarged' by 'digitalizing' them...

by Datschge (not verified)

I tend to say that emotions can't really be expressed digitally at all, especially not if you are communicating in groups across many different national and cultural borders. If something is interpreted as intended emotion it nearly always turns out to be received as an extreme form of it. There are way too many differences in explicite and implicite communication between different regions so that the emotional value one receives through a communication is only by a tiny lucky chance the same as the sender actually intended. Thus I personally suggest to keep open group communication free of any suggestion or expectation of emotions. (Intercultural communication is the study field for this kind of researches, interesting stuff, am just back from such a course. =)

by NOKA (not verified)

Dear Peter.

I don't want to offend you, but your use of "i" instead of capital I
when refering to yourself is very disturbing (at least to me) and it
is damaging the reading flow. I would be very grateful if from now on
you will try to avoid this over-common language pitfall.

Thank you.

by Peter Rockai (not verified)

Hmmh... As far as i know, this is a spelling issue, not a grammar one. And yes, i know about English custom of writing capital 'I' to refer to oneself. However, i do not like it and will not start doing it again (i used to conform in this respect). I find my underuse of articles more disturbing for example (or other bad grammar, like verb patterns and the like).
Sure, i will have to conform in the (more official) written documents, but please, leave me with my little traits while i write the Traffic. I hope you can cope with it as it is... You might as well get used to it =).

Cheers...

by MandrakeUser (not verified)

i also like the use of "i", non capitalized, as a humble way of referring yo self, I really do :-)

Cheers !

by Scott Wheeler (not verified)

Right, it humbly states that you don't think that the rules of grammar and syntax apply to you. ;-)

by jcd (not verified)

i do it, not becauase i think that the rules don't apply to me.. i do it because 1, this is an informal mode of communication (do you always use perfect english when speaking with a friend?) and 2, because i'm lazy and don't want to be bothered with pressing the shift key. the fact that you can still read it proves that it is still effectivley communicating.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

Users do not demand anything, they make feature requests. Feature requests should be taken as suggestions.

> "Dear Jim, you are not in the position to demand anything from us. ... "

Developers should not say things like this. It is by definition arrogance. The reason is that it is presumptuous. Assuming a "demand" is a presumption.

Developers should be aware of the fact that the various statements to the effect that this is free and you can (therefore) take it or leave it are not appreciated by users. I realize that developers do not understand why this irritates users, but it is the simple truth that it does.

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JRT

by anonymous (not verified)

JESUS CHRIST! Do we have to go over this again? The user called Ingo a "Fuckhead" and everyone is complaining about Ingo's response to *that*?

Sorry, but this is just getting ridiculous...

by Stephen Douglas (not verified)

No, as I said that was unacceptable. However, Inogs initial response (before the user called him that) was also out of order.

by Maynard (not verified)

The person who was in the 'wrong' here, if you can call it that, was the guy who prepared the Traffic. I do not know about many people, but from what I read, or rather, how I read, it seemed that Ingo (is it?) wrote 2 emails after receiveing the first. However, this has been shown not to be the case. I am sure some people literally 'skim' through the traffic, and read the 'salient' points, i.e., highlighted bits and so on. I certainly do this. It was only later, after wisely refraining from posting, having noticed that there seemed to be a major misunderstanding between people, that I revisited the traffic. Having reread it more thoroughly, I realised that those people who were saying Ingo was overly rude had the wrong chronolgy in their heads. Partly their fault because they didn't read too thoroughly, but partly Peter's, because he did nto anticipate that his resentation could cause problems. Next time, when reproducing an exchange, I would advise the writer to preserve the chronology, as this is valuable to people who, with good reason, cannot be bothered to read each and every letter of the traffic.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

It should be noted that my posting, as well as other's, was based on a misunderstanding of what KDE Traffic said.

I think that others have now clarified this point in some detail.

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JRT

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

> I'd like to propose replacing some of the existing icons with Rohit's
> versions, ... .

> David Faure was quick to agree ...

And (didn't seem to make the Traffic) James Richard Tyrer strongly dissented.

Note that the point here is: *replacing*. Why do we have to _replace_ them? Can't we allow the user to choose? Is this starting to sound like GNOME? :-)

This is a usability issue. These new icons are harder to visualize than the traditional unthemed ones.

If we need to handicap our office suite (and other applications) perhaps we can find a way to shoot ourselves in the other foot as well. :-)

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JRT

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I think that this needs some clarification.

It appears that after looking into this in more detail that the icons which are being replaced are KDEClassic icons which for some reason were installed as crystalsvg. These should be replaced since they shouldn't have been installed there to begin with.

What I was objecting to was, and still is, the removal of the KDEClassic icons correctly installed as hicolor.

And that is why I ask if this is going to be like GNOME.

I have no objections to installing CrystalSVG icons, but why is it necessary to REMOVE the KDEClassic icons?

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JRT