text work.

SVN revision: 81501
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Carsten Haitzler 2012-12-21 03:03:35 +00:00
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@ -30,11 +30,11 @@ The default look is not what you are stuck with. Enlightenment was the first Win
<center><?php img("e-settings.png", "Enlightenment Settings");?></center>
<p>
That leads onto the next thing you may find quickly. Enlightenment has so many options, because we believe that <b>CHOICE</b> is important. If you don't believe that your preferences matter, then maybe another project is better for you, but we firmly believe that they do. We may not have accounted for every single option out there. We may not have presented it to you in a way that makes it childs play to find and use, but we have tried. Over time options will be cleaned up and accessibility to them improved. A lot of them are there simply because they needed to be and not a lot of time was spent fine-tuning how to present them in a fool-proof manner. This will improve over time and with input, suggestions, patches etc. we hope to still offer all the options you need, but in a much more accessible form.
That leads onto the next thing you may find quickly. Enlightenment has so many options, because we believe that <b>CHOICE</b> is important. If you don't believe that your preferences matter, then maybe another project is better for you, but we firmly believe that they do. We also believe that there are others who have different preferences to you and that they matter too. We may not have accounted for every single option out there. We may not have presented it to you in a way that makes it childs play to find and use, but we have tried. Over time options will be cleaned up and accessibility to them improved. A lot of them are there simply because they needed to be and not a lot of time was spent fine-tuning how to present them in a fool-proof manner. This will improve over time and with input, suggestions, patches etc. we hope to still offer all the options you need or want, but in a much more accessible form.
</p>
<p>
Not everything is perfect, polished and "finished". This is not the end of a road. It is the start of a whole new one. If you find something you think could be better, please don't just complain and vanish. <?php a("contact", "Contact us");?> and open up a dialogue. Maybe we agree. Maybe we disagree. Maybe we are already working on it. Maybe you can help out and provide patches too.
Not everything is perfect, polished and "finished". This is not the end of a path. It is the start of a whole new one. If you find something you think could be better, please don't just complain and vanish. <?php a("contact", "Contact us");?> and open up a dialogue. Maybe we agree. Maybe we disagree. Maybe we are already working on it. Maybe you can help out and provide patches too.
</p>
<hr>
@ -42,66 +42,66 @@ Not everything is perfect, polished and "finished". This is not the end of a roa
<h3>Philosophy</h3>
<p>
We have certain things that are important to us and how we work. They will often show immediately to users, and it is good to explain this here.
We have certain things that are important to us and how we work. They will often show immediately to users, and it is good to explain this here. They will lurk behind our decisions and responses, so instead of having to explain them each time, setting the tone here is a good idea.
</p>
<blockquote><h3>CHOICE IS GOOD</h3>
<p>
A user should be given as much control as is feasible. There is often a trade-off in maintainability by the programmers, current and future development, as well as imply available time. It is always best to make any feature "just work" without options if possible, but the effort may be immense, and so options are provided to allow the fine-tuning to be done by users. Sometimes options are dangerous, but necessary for some people, and sometimes they are so dangerous that they are buried under layers of complex systems to try and keep them from being mis-used, but in the end, choice is good. That means options and configuration is important. We'd love to streamline how they are presented, and make it easier for the "average joe", but never shall we do this at the expense of the power user.
A user should be given as much control as is feasible. There is often a trade-off in maintainability by the programmers of some code, current and future development, as well as available time to do the work. It is always best to make any feature "just work" without options for everyone if possible, but the effort may be immense, or the "what does "just work" really mean may not be as clear to some as to others, and so options are provided to allow the fine-tuning to be done by users. Sometimes options are dangerous, but necessary for some people. Sometimes they are so dangerous that they are buried under layers of complex systems to try and keep them from being mis-used. Sometimes they are just, by nature, complex, and that's life. In the end, <em>choice is good</em>. That means that options and configuration are important. We'd love to streamline how they are presented, and make it easier for the "Average Joe", but never shall we do this at the expense of the power user.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>VANILLA VS. STRAWBERRY VS. CHOCOLATE</h3>
<p>
Like with choice of options, the actual aesthetics are something that is highly subjective and personal. Otherwise we'd all still be driving black Ford model-T's. Some desktops and OS's provide vanilla looks. Some are strawberry. Some can never be changed. We have chosen chocolate by default. Mostly because it means we stand out by default. You can change this if you want. You can even create your own flavors of look in gory detail if you spend the time on the artwork and layout. Take advantage of the choice.
Like with choice of options, the actual aesthetics are something that is highly subjective and personal. What is beautiful for one person can be ugly for another. Otherwise we'd all still be driving black Ford model-T's and all be happy about it. Some desktops and OSs provide vanilla looks. Some are strawberry. Some can never be changed. We have chosen chocolate by default. Mostly because it means we stand out by default. You can change this if you want. You can even create your own flavors of look in gory detail if you spend the time on the artwork and layout. Take advantage of the choice.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>EFFICIENCY MATTERS</h3>
<p>
We want Enlightenment to be as efficient as possible. We don't want to sacrifice looks either, so we have spent a lot of effort making a lot of libraries that help this happen. Our theme files are binary blobs. They may appear opaque at first, but they are dissectable, given tools we provide. The same for our configuration files. We value runtime speed and efficiency over giving the user encouragement to go hack their configuration files with a text editor. We spent a lot of time providing a GUI for almost every option that exists in Enlightenment. It manages this for you. It's to ensure maximum efficiency at runtime. If you need to on the odd occasion dig into the bowels of these files we have tools that can export and import text files that you can edit, so for the real tinkerer, hacker and developer you can do what you need to, <b>BUT</b> the regular user is discouraged from messing at this level, as this is where you can get yourself into more trouble if you get it wrong. We have also chosen a much more process-lean model with fewer processes and more rolled into a single one. This gives better opportunities for efficiency.
We want Enlightenment to be as efficient as possible. We don't want to sacrifice looks or functionality either, so we have spent a lot of effort making a lot of libraries that help this happen. Our theme files are binary blobs. They may appear opaque at first, but they are dissectable, given tools we provide like <em>edje_decc</em>. The same for our configuration files (<em>eet</em>). We value runtime speed and efficiency over giving the user encouragement to go hack their configuration files with a text editor. We spent a lot of time providing a GUI for almost every option that exists in Enlightenment. It manages this for you. It's to ensure maximum efficiency at runtime. If you need to, on the odd occasion, dig into the bowels of these files we have tools that can export and import text files that you can edit, so for the real tinkerer, hacker and developer you can do what you need to, <b>BUT</b> the regular user is discouraged from messing at this level, as this is where you can get yourself into more trouble if you get it wrong. We have also chosen a much more process-lean model with fewer processes and more rolled into a single one. This gives better opportunities for efficiency, but makes things a little more fragile. To solve the fragility we have made error recovery very good with enlightenment catching its own errors and offering the ability to debug or just restart from where u left off and move on without losing any work. E17 leaves a crash log file (~/.e-crashdump.txt) if you have gdb installed and you have debug symbols on.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>NOT EVERYONE DRIVES A F1</h3>
<p>
Not just being efficient, but realizing that not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware to run Enlightenment. It's also not just one architecture. They may be stuck on something quite old, or want Enlightenment to work on something quite bizarre. We have gone to a lot of effort to make Enlightenment scale from anything like a 200Mhz ARM phone with 32M RAM all the way up to the latest multi-core, multi-Ghz and 16GB+ desktop beasts with 2 or more screens. We keep in mind the puny end of the spectrum all the way up to the beasty end. When we make decisions they try and ensure every part of this spectrum gets a fair go, and preferably leaves as few people behind as possible. This also means sometimes raising the bar in order not to hold back future things, but also means sometimes holding back until a better way is found.
Not just being efficient, but realizing that not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware to run Enlightenment is what we are about. It's also not just one architecture. They may be stuck on something quite old (some 486), or want Enlightenment to work on something quite bizarre. We have gone to a lot of effort to make Enlightenment scale from anything like a 200Mhz ARM phone with 32M RAM all the way up to the latest multi-core, 64bit multi-Ghz and 16GB+ desktop beasts with 2 or more screens. We keep in mind the puny end of the spectrum all the way up to the beastly end. When we make decisions they try and ensure every part of this spectrum gets a fair go, and preferably leaves as few people behind as possible. This also means sometimes raising the bar in order not to hold back future things, but also means sometimes holding back until a better way is found. You'll find evidence of this in the fact that out-of-the-box we have made compositing fast and usable even without a GPU, and yet we can fully push your GPU if you have one and it has solid drivers. We care.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>EYE CANDY MATTERS</h3>
<p>
If you want a minimal interface, you can configure Enlightenment to be quite minimal, but it takes effort. Enlightenment leans towards providing eye candy where it can, and often comes by default that way. This is how we roll. We always have. Haters gonna hate. That's how we roll.
If you want a minimal interface, you can configure Enlightenment to be quite minimal, but it takes effort. Enlightenment leans towards providing eye candy where it can, and often comes by default that way. This is how we roll. We always have. Haters gonna hate. That's how we roll. Bring on the lollipops!
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>WE MAKE LIBRARIES MUCH MORE THAN WM'S</h3>
<p>
One thing over the years that has happened, is that the project has morphed into a library project much more than a Window Manager or Desktop project. This is why there was no apparent progress in the Window Manager for many years. It was sunk all into building libraries and a toolkit, in order to make the WM and much more besides. A lot of effort was spent in abstractions to ensure we have many years of smooth sailing into the future. When we do things we often go and build libraries first, and then try and make them applicable to much more than just the simple problem being solved in Enlightenment, which adds overhead, but provides valuable resources for developers other than us who wish to re-use that effort in their own creations.
One thing over the years that has happened, is that the project has morphed into a library project much more than a Window Manager or Desktop project. Of our released code something like 80% of it is stand-alone libraries. This is why there was no apparent progress in the Window Manager for many years. The progress was sunk all into building libraries and a toolkit, in order to make the WM and much more besides. A lot of effort was spent on abstractions to ensure we have many years of smooth sailing into the future. When we do things we often go and build libraries first, and then try and make them applicable to much more than just the simple problem being solved in Enlightenment, which adds overhead, but provides valuable resources for developers other than us who wish to re-use that effort in their own creations.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>PORTING MATTERS</h3>
<p>
We, as a group, primarily work on Linux systems. We have developers who use and focus on others like MacOS-X, Windows, the BSD's even PS3. We care about porting, and that often adds overhead and complexity. Sometimes we shortcut that and do it "the Linux way", and we are always open to ways of making that better and more portable. We welcome patches and input and anyone willing to do the hard yards of supporting their OS.
We, as a group, primarily work on Linux systems. We have developers who use and focus on others like MacOS-X, Windows, the BSD's even PS3. We care about porting, and that often adds overhead and complexity, but we don't have build and development farms set up for each OS out there, so often you'll find Linux gets the support first and foremost, and then it's improved for other targets. Sometimes we shortcut that and do it "the Linux way" only as we have problems to solve and can worry about other target systems later. We are always open to ways of making that better and more portable. We welcome patches and input and anyone willing to do the hard yards of supporting their OS.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>WE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR</h3>
<p>
We are not always that serious a bunch. Deal with it. We have a sense of Humor. We exercise it regularly. :)
We are not always that serious a bunch. Deal with it. We have a sense of Humor. We exercise it regularly. You may call it "unprofessional". We call it "having a life". :)
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>THE WORLD IS NOT ENGLISH</h3>
<p>
Whilst most of our website is in English, as is the default language for Enlightenment (until you change it), as is the common language of communication, we realize and are fully aware that people speak other languages. Many of our developers are not native English speakers. We have tried to support "the rest of the world" as much as we can and hope to continue in future. It is an ongoing process to provide translations and such support. Help out. We do care. We are busy. Very busy. But we care. It should be hopefully evident in the large list of languages Enlightenment is already translated to partially or completely, and the fact we support selection of keyboard layouts and input methods as well. We are all UTF-8 through and through and support right-to-left text too as well as complex composition (if you provide the right dependencies). Many of our developers do not live in their own native languages and countries, so we are fully aware of the challenges people face with another language environment.
Whilst most of our website is in English, as is the default language for Enlightenment (until you change it), and it's the common language of communication amongst developers and even a lot of users. Even so, we realize and are fully aware that people speak other languages. Many, in fact most of our developers are not native English speakers. We have tried to support "the rest of the world" as much as we can and hope to continue in future. It is an ongoing process to provide translations and such support. Help out. We do care. We are busy. Very busy. But we care. It should be hopefully evident in the large list of languages Enlightenment is already translated to, partially or completely, and the fact we support selection of keyboard layouts and input methods as well. We are all UTF-8 through and through and support right-to-left text too as well as complex composition as is found in some languages (if you provide the right dependencies). Many of our developers do not live in their own native languages and countries, so we are fully aware of the challenges people face with another language environment.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>OPEN IS BEST</h3>
<p>
Enlightenment and its libraries are all open source (BSD 2 clause, LGPL or GPL for some binaries only). It is a mix because the person who founded each library chose the license. We respect that choice. We believe open is best because it simply is the best way to propagate knowledge, gain feedback and input and build a community beyond your small borders. It gets your software onto more devices and operating systems. It allows developers to poke and prod and find out what is really happening. It's the most detailed documentation ever made. It simply is better. There are no other political aspirations for this project beyond that. Open is best. This also goes for our communication. Warts and all we discuss in the open.
Enlightenment and its libraries are all open source (BSD 2 clause, LGPL or GPL for some <em>executable binaries</em> only). It is a mix because the person who founded each library chose the license, or a license is inherited from some original source. We respect that choice and license. We believe <em>open is best</em> because it simply is the best way to propagate knowledge, gain feedback and input and build a community beyond your small borders. It gets your software onto more devices and operating systems. It allows developers to poke and prod and find out what is really happening. It's the most detailed documentation ever made. It simply is better. But your "brand" of open and someone else's may differ. That's not for us to promote or debate. There are no other political aspirations for this project beyond that. Open is best. This also goes for our communication. Warts and all we discuss in the open.
</p>
</blockquote>