[wine] Re: window caption buttons

William Poetra Yoga H williampoetra at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 18 14:33:59 CDT 2004


--- David Lee Lambert <lamber45 at cse.msu.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 08:31:37AM -0700, William Poetra Yoga Hadisoesen
> wrote:
> > --- Andreas Mohr <andi at rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de> wrote:
> 
> > > If it really makes a functional difference, then I guess it should be
> fixed,
> > > otherwise why not leave it as is?
> 
> > 1. Developers coming from Windows can have the same "look and feel". This
> > increases their productivity, although indirectly. When people see
> something
> > different but similar to the one they see everyday, their attention will be
> > divided to the new object and the work they are doing. And their motivation
> to
> > work will decrease, too, if the GUI doesn't get fixed.
> 
> Once in a while on Windows,  I tweak the desktop fonts and colors a little 
> bit just so it doesn't get boring.  I've made document backgrounds 
> off-white;  changed the menu font;  even done a little bit with Active 
> Desktop on some boxes.  An off-by-one error in a terminal emulator that
> lets it only display 79 columns needs to be fixed,  but I'd rather we kept 
> little oddities like this.

Yeah, you've got a point there. But then wouldn't it be better if we start off
emulating the "standard" win9x style, and then create themes and stuff? Just
like reactos: they start by trying to be nt4.0-compatible, but have plans to do
win2k. Or xpde: they start with the win2k shell and add the winxp features
later ;)

> > 2. Windows users looking at WINE will reject it straight away, because it
> > doesn't look like a "professionaly-made" software, and maybe mocking it as
> a
> > carelessly written software, with sloppy GUI. Remember, some users become
> > developers.
> 
> I don't aggree with this either.  "Professional" apps on Windows these 
> days go out of their way to look fancy,  do their own drawing,  be a 
> little bit different than Windows.  (I know these have better alternatives 
> on Linux but) look at MusicMatch Jukebox, WinAmp, RealPlayer, Windows 
> Media Player, AOL, Kodak Photo Editor... these apps have all their own 
> icons anyway.  The Win3.1->Win95 or WinNT->WinXP UI jump is already bigger 
> than that from Wine to the average of all versions it matches,  in terms 
> of things like this.

Yes, there are inconsistencies between Windows versions, and between some
programs and programs which use the "standard" ui. It's true that there are
many professional programs which draw their own windows.

But have you looked more closely at WINE's window decorations? They're like
Windows 95's, but they're somewhat different. I think it's better (and more
appealing to the eye) if we were to define a theme (WINE theme) that looks at
least obviously different from the Windows shell. It's because when we draw
things so similar -- yet different -- to things found in Windows, people won't
like it. It's like, doing a (sorry, just a comparison) fake thing that's
similar to the original. If you have lived in China, you can find fake Nike's
everywhere, for example. Or fake Yonex shuttlecocks. They're not so much
different from the original, but they still look... odd. It's one reason people
won't buy them.

And one more thing, is that I've found numerous off-by-one bugs in the ui part
(that draws buttons, decorations, etc), just by attacking the "caption buttons"
problem. I know they're off-by one bugs because they don't look right :(

I'm not a good programmer, and I don't know how the Windows UI work, so if I'm
left to fix the UI bugs there would be little or no wastage of resources, it
will make me learn, and also make WINE look better. So I think it should be
okay for me to "fix" the buttons (and numerous bugs I find along the way).



		
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