[Geany-Devel] New Direction for Geany

Mon Apr 3 16:41:10 UTC 2017

I agree, but what about the plugins?

Maybe we can change the plugins to work like chrome, where you can't 
influence the already perfect UI.  You can only add a menu entry to a 
button placed firmly on the top far right of the window.

We could also learn from firefox, and make many improvements:

  * Make multiple plugin architectures, that all supersede one another
    but contain features, dependencies, and abilities that other method
    don't support.
  * Make the latest plugin architecture stripped and devoid of
    functionality, announcing to everyone that it the direction we want
    to go.
  * Make sure the older plugin architectures will be deprecated in the
    near future.
  * Make all of the plugins key off of the software version for
    compatibility, only compatible with minor version changes shown by
    the numbers after the decimal.
  * Change eeany's versioning to only update major versions ever couple
    of weeks, making all plugins incompatible frequently, and only the
    most diligent ones will stick around.  We want our version to jump
    as fast as possible, so we can appear to be progressing like the
    other software developers, with large numbers like eeany 51.
  * We should strip out long standing features (like firefox is doing
    with java applets and other plugins) to simplify what we support,
    with no option to keep using those features unless they modify a
    config file manually, which will go away in the next version.
  * We should warn users if a file is insecure, such as containing any
    passwords or sensitive information.  (Based on the previous email,
    we could also send the data up to HQ in clear text for our archives,
    maybe auto-mail it to this mailing list.)
  * We should change all buttons and UI elements to be very tablet
    friendly.  The bigger the buttons, the better.  Make a onscreen
    keyboard the default.  We all know tablets are the future of computers.

Learning from Gnome 3 developers, we could:

  * Hide notifications to not be as distracting
  * Allow themes in CSS, but offer little documentation.
  * Make sure there are two types of eeany code, some components using
    GTK2, others using GTK3, that run together but are not themed the same.
  * Make sure GTK3 components have no customization features out of the
    box, unless via a eeany tweak tool made and maintained by third
    parties.  The customization should be minimal, as we decide what is
    best for the users.
  * Force users to update to our latest eeany, because even though it's
    a rewrite to a whole new interface and design method, we need to
    make it as obnoxious to stay in their older version as possible, and
    require any forks to have to do any considerable rewrite to not
    conflict.

Learning from SystemD, we could:

  * Make sure there are race conditions on startup, such as requiring
    specific users and groups at the wrong times, leaving services in a
    broken state.
  * Make eeany run as a service and only log to journalctl.

Learning from Ubuntu Unity and Compiz:

  * We could strip out features we don't want but are highly popular.
  * Make sure all current developers no longer want to work on the
    project (like compiz), in favor of wayland, which any year now might
    be used by someone, somewhere, and supports rendering on the
    graphics card.  This will require a whole eeany rewrite, so we may
    as well abandon support until wayland becomes mainstream, or quantum
    computing is common, whichever happens last.
  * Put all menus on the left edge of eeany, and make them large icons
    that show active features with a barely noticeable little marking. 
    Make sure that the buttons aren't visible on some graphics cards.
  * Make any of the buttons when clicked take over the rest of the screen.
  * Any button pressed should show all features in eeany searchable from
    a search field by specific feature name.

I'm sure I missed some great design decisions, but you get the idea.

Steve

Also, learning from firefox, we should
On 03/31/2017 07:25 PM, Lex Trotman wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Geany having failed at being a small fast lightweight IDE and having
> become a chubby middle aged application, its time for a re-think, a
> new direction, a fresh start.
>
> Instead it is proposed that Geany embrace the paradigms of the most
> successful IDEs (like Emacs or Eclipse) and make coding with Geany
> great again.
>
> So looking at those things that are common to Emacs and Eclipse I propose:
>
> 1) Geany should change its name to start with an E, that is obviously
> neccessary,
>
> 2) Eeany should embrace the bloat, incorporate the whole operating
> system like Emacs and become an overblown interfering annoyance like
> Eclipse,
>
> 3) clearly using common UI conventions is important (to Eclipse) but
> using custom paradigms is important (to Emacs) so it is proposed that
> Eeany alternate between using normal keybindings and using randomly
> selected sequences of keys.  This will make editing an adventure again
> as you struggle to find the "undo" sequence.
>
> 4) Geany is far too fast, so Eeany should incorporate code to perform
> bitcoin mining between keystrokes, nobody will notice, and the devs
> will get rich,
>
> 5) of course great software is not just Emacs and Eclipse, so Eeany
> should copy the most important of the paradigms of great software,
> phoning home with copious user data which can be sold, again making
> the devs rich, and clearly this should be done in secret without any
> ability to cancel it, using a spawned process that continues after
> Eeany exits (and restarts on boot) without any way of preventing it,
> and
>
> 6) having gotten all that data it is of course essential that it be
> used, so Eeany must incorporate ads, a short video selling insurance
> before the compile results display, tooltips suggesting a new
> toothpaste to help clean both your code and your smile.
>
> I'm sure everybody will support this initiative to put Eeany where it
> belongs in the universe of code development, at the top*.
>
> Regards
>
> * YMMV, press release issued 1 April 2017
> _______________________________________________
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> Devel at lists.geany.org
> https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel

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