[JDEV] Jabber Client Design Tutorial

[DJ Adams]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 10:27:57AM -0700, Jens Alfke wrote:
> ugly that does the job. (At the risk of starting a flame war, in my 
> experience nearly all Unix programmers tend to fall into the latter 
> category.) No design document like yours will really reach the people 

Don't worry, I'm not going to flame - I agree with what you're
saying, but it's important to say why they (I suppose I should 
use the word 'we') build clients that appear ugly to a lot of
people - I for one *hate* having to point and click and follow
cascading menus and have my screen cluttered by silly icons.
I much prefer to control an app with my main input device - my 
keyboard - by a combination of keystrokes or whatever. 

I'm not saying this to be obtuse - it's the truth (and why I use
mutt exclusively and still use sjabber on many conferences) and
any UI design that excludes this point of view runs the risk of
missing something fundamental.

The group of people who feel most at home with a Unix command line
and all the tools that such an environment comes with (including 
the ones with these 'ugly' UIs) may be a minority, but it's a damn
huge minority.

dj