Comment 9 for bug 346095

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:15:02 -0000
Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden> wrote:

> It's very common for replacement components to have different levels
> of configurability from what they are replacing. For example, if we
> decided to replace Pidgin with Empathy as the default IM client, that
> wouldn't in itself mean Empathy was wrong not to offer a "Use
> smooth-scrolling" option or a "Use status from last exit at startup"
> option like Pidgin does. Similarly if we decided to replace Rhythmbox
> with Banshee as the default music player, that wouldn't in itself
> mean Banshee was wrong not to offer a "Toolbar Button Labels" setting
> like Rhythmbox does. If you're going to propose that Notify OSD have
> a particular option, advocating for it on its own merits (for
> example, what sort of people would use the different setting values?)
> would be much more interesting than "well, notification-daemon had a
> gconf option for that".

You're going to compare "Please let me put the notifications in a
place where it is easier for my eye to see them so that I can work with
them" with "please give me back a superficial feature that doesn't
really matter and just makes me feel better because it uses more CPU
cycles"? Seriously? Do you _have_ any intelligence? Or are you just
following the fearless leader? This is a _bug_. Maybe you're fine,
and maybe it is easy for your eye to catch the notifications up at the
top-right, but it isn't for mine. Period. It's a usability issue.
That's what you don't seem to get.

Smooth scrolling isn't a usability issue. There is _zero_ basis for
comparison.

> ktp420, you're quite correct to point out that the average user is not
> going to want to recompile software. But that's fine, because they are
> not going to want to configure the bubble placement either. We could
> be wrong about that; the beauty of Free Software is that if we are
> wrong, you can make your own variant and it will be wildly popular.

No, the average user is going to want to make his or her desktop
accessible to his or her usage style and patterns. I suppose the
side-effect of being able to claim the beauty of free software is that
we are blessed with people who can be lazy because they choose to do so
and not implement accessibility features. Seriously.

Have you not considered that some people have piss-poor peripheral
vision? That those people will be likely to be the ones to move their
damn notifications closer to where they are looking _all the time_ on
their monitors? Oh, hi there. I am one of those. Fuck you, too.

This is a very Microsoft thing to do. Not only that, but it breaks
_my_ system, for _me_. And hell, no, I won't fork notify-osd. There
was no reason to create it in the first place, IMHO. There was
absolutely nothing wrong with notification-dæmon.

It would appear that Intrepid is as far as I go; I cannot go anywhere
else with a distribution that would propose to know how I want to use
my system better than I do. Assholes.