[Sugar-devel] rethinking your icon customization patch

[Simon Schampijer]

On 06/20/2013 01:28 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
> I agree that the technical solution we have come up with to a large
> extent obviates the need for consensus around whether or not to
> implement this feature as it pushes it to the user space in the from
> of an activity. (Gonzalo and I have been discussing the fact that
> other cpsection widgets could also be moved to activities, but that is
> for another day.
>
> Regarding the specifics of this feature, I have not found any of the
> arguments that this feature is somehow going to confuse our users even
> remotely convincing. Three observations: (1) any change to the icon is
> driven by explicit user action, so no surprises there; (2) in
> virtually every other system or service our users encounter, there is
> the ability to set a personal avatar, so to argue that this is somehow
> going to confuse them in Sugar seems a stretch; and (3) particularly
> in light of the new approach, making it easier for our end users to
> make modifications to the system is in keeping with our overall
> pedagogy -- moving away from requiring root access to make changes is
> a good thing and while we don't want our users to inadvertently break
> things irreparably, there is something to be said for learning from
> the experience of breaking things. Bottom line, I seem to have more
> faith in the abilities of our users than perhaps is warranted, but I
> think that is aligned with our goals to encourage our users to take
> change. (The fact that this feature comes from one of our users says a
> lot.)
>
> Regarding our broken decision-making process, the problem I have is
> less that we don't reach consensus than that the discussions are
> happening very late in the process. We had, for example, had an email
> from our release manager months ago about the features proposed for
> this release. That was the time to question whether or not this
> feature should be accepted. To wait until now is not fair to the
> person, in the case, Ignacio, who has been working hard on his
> implementation. It is fine to give technical criticism at this point,
> and I think that discussion has been fruitful, but in my opinion, we
> really need to be more forthcoming earlier in the process about the
> features themselves.

Has that feature been accepted for 0.100? I must admit that I do not 
read all the mails and I might have overseen this one, at least I first 
saw [1] when the patch was submitted. Has there been a mail to ask for 
feedback for the design?

The process tries to make room for that early feedback, especially for 
Features that changes UI or work flow.

Simon

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Icon_Change
[2] 
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Policy#Propose_a_feature_for_addition_into_the_release_cycle