Simon:
The way I see it now, before ETK, there was _only_ the window manager
(and a set of power libraries with lots of potential). You and I know
very well that Enlightenment has always been raster's baby. For many
years now people have conform to whatever path Raster chooses, & he has
made mistakes along the way:
http://www.cored.org/tmp/rached-snapshot.jpg
For somebody that spends 50% of his graphic time refactoring edjes, i
don't see what the big deal is behind moving dialogs to modules. Sure,
we now have to load the module in order to use the dialog but in theory
wouldn't it be possible to have them visible in the config panel just as
they were, and when you clicked on a config panel item it would load the
module ? In any case, would this be the desired behavior ? Usually
raster warns about _big_ changes, like what happened with shelves. Which
I should mention I totally hated.
Detour went from:
http://www.cored.org/proto/detour/concepts/detour_prototype_.png
To this:
http://www.cored.org/tmp/detour-clean.png
Sure now that i look back and realize the original design was not going
anywhere. It would have been almost impossible to draw organic widgets
with the current color scheme.
For a long time I didn't mind having two toolkits and the e17 internal
widgets. I was contempt with e17's widgets. Sure, I don't like the look
of possibly 80% of e17's dialog. I can give you some examples.
The wallpaper dialog.
Why do we have to click a stupid check button in order to use the
theme's wallpaper. Why not just put the theme wallpaper on the ilist
widget itself, so it can be chosen from among all wallpapers. Why do you
have two radio widgets to chose between Personal and System wallpapers.
Why can't we just have them all scanned in the list itself. WTF does the
Go up a directory button ever do? Not only that, but their placement.
Its ridiculous.
I'll be honest, I'm starting to feel the pressure of trying to complete
three different edjes for three different projects (e17, etk, ewl).
Why do I have to spent hours working on two widget toolkits that manage
their widgets and draw them differently.
I don't reproach you for ETK. It has shown potential. Just take a look
around, the apps (although i don't always agree with their design), look
at evolve, the possibilities.
I started making an edje for ewl long long time ago. Back when detour
didn't even have most widgets in place. It had no scrollbars, and most
widgets where missing. How was i supposed to give the ewl edje sliders
back when detour didn't even have one. So you see, i easily let it go.
Because of etk, now I have more experience when it comes to designing
widgets. & I can still improve greatly.
"..The big problem is that Rasterman has demonstrated to be a lousy
leader. And Nathan suffers the same dilemma. Either from lack of time,
or simple because of timezone differences."
What I meant by it was, as a project leader, Raster has shown to be a
lousy one. There is little direction and the only road map, is in his
head. And then I tried to come up with a conclusion by saying, maybe its
the scope of the project. The man says to have very little time to work
on e17, let alone answer all his emails and questions that come up on irc.
And its true, the project is grown to big for him to manage it all.
I too have felt my share of frustration. I'll give you an example.
I've been trying to help the ephoto developer by creating mockups for
him. I've given him several. Here are two of them:
http://www.cored.org/tmp/ephoto.png
Ok, does it look anything like ephoto. No it doesn't.
As you see, I tend to design with EDJE in mind, only to realize that EWL
does things so much differently.
Basically he could never get it to look like the way I wanted it.
So a few days ago I drew him another mockup. This time using floating
windows like the Gimp:
http://www.cored.org/tmp/eph3.png
Its a rough mockup, but what matters is the idea and the widget
positioning behind it. ( i didn't include any window borders, it was
pointless to do so )
So I've have had my share of frustration, disappointments, haha (je suis
ridicule). But to answer your question, yes, i would like to see a much
better dictated project, perhaps better defined.
Alberto