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KDE And Gnome Cooperate On Interface Guidelines

Posted by timothy on from the which-is-smart dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Competing infrastructures may foster improvement in each desktop, but the Gnome and KDE hackers still know how to work together when needed. The Free *nix desktop has been improving quickly. Red Hat's unified desktop was controversial, but obviously the right decision for regular users. Now that KDE and Gnome have decided to combine their Human Interface Guides, it can be done right--by the developers themselves. Note: they also want to involve 'people working on other non-KDE non-GNOME HIGs.'" Update: 02/03 20:19 GMT by T : Apparently not everyone's browser can read http://freedesktop.org, so the initial link up there now sports a "www" as well. And it's .org -- sorry.

7 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. We're losing sight of the important issue. by OpCode42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're losing sight of what the most important issue is here. Should a unified desktop be called GNODE or KNOME?

    1. Re:We're losing sight of the important issue. by Dr.+Smeegee · · Score: 5, Funny

      How about KMODE?

      What is it about that acronym that sounds familiar?

  2. NOOOOO!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's next, vi & emacs developers frolicing in the fields after a nice picnic? Then what? What fuel have we then for the flame wars?!?

  3. Who's with me... by DenOfEarth · · Score: 5, Funny
    This is just great...I can't believe they want to combine the human interface guidelines into one document for everyone. What's happening to the open source community, people? Let's start a new project aimed at making things back the way they are supposed to be, with a different interface for every window, just like the command line has different forms for every command.

    it's a bummer that sarcasm is so hard to write via text

  4. The worst possible people to do the UI... by CountBrass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    are the developers.

    They think and know too much about *how* the system is *implemented* rather than how it will be *used* - which is a very different thing. They tend to be function oriented rather than task oriented.

    On the plus side, having UI design guidelines is a good start and at least it gives something that can serve as a basis for discussion.

    --
    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
  5. Re:Whatever happened to "best fit" by Dan+Ost · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't agree.

    In my experience, the coder is the last person
    who should be designing the user interface for just
    about anything beyond command line tools.

    Let the coder design the interface between the
    code and the UI, but let someone with more
    relevent training and experience design the UI.

    --

    *sigh* back to work...
  6. Bitstream Vera the default font? by PRR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since the Bitstream people were kind enough to be the first to donate a good TTF for use with Linux, would it be likely that Gnome/KDE would standardize on Bitstream Vera as the default (true type) font for their desktops?