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Every software has a reason to be complex. Often software authors desire to make simple software by removing such features regarded ‘complex’ without understand

Every software has a reason to be complex. Often software authors desire to make simple software by removing such features regarded ‘complex’ without understanding why those features were introduced (mostly because they don’t use them). The consequences is that people who are in the minority can’t use the software. As a CJK person, the most prominent example is multilingual support in the FOSS community; I still have not seen any Linux GUI app with proper out-of-the-box IME support (and that includes DEs, WMs, etc...) mostly because for some reason (hint, most are from the western world) the devs of Linux distributions turn off IME support by default. Is it really ‘simple’ to turn off some features that you don’t use, resulting in total breakage of apps when the feature is in use? Really?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I tihnk that's just a symptom of how FOSS devs think about GUIs. GUI is largely not something FOSS developers actually use. The design of FOSS GUIs makes it seem as though "GUI" is something they've read about in text books and personally only see value in as a fancy tmux. Consequently, the only mental model they have for someone who actually uses a GUI is the kind of person who only needs a web kiosk.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  > the only mental model they have for someone who actually uses a GUI is the kind of person who only needs a web kiosk They should check out Directory Opus -- and I mean really check out the documentation, scripting language, all of it. Now that is software. I suspect many have this mental model because it allows them to be lazy and make lame things, just like not taking 10 minutes to make the CSS nice is called "minimalistic" and not "fucking inept".
Gunax 7y ago
I think this is the most concise view of the problem I had read. I am going to use your comment as an analogy.
anderspitman 7y ago
> Every software has a reason to be complex Yep. The problem is that sometimes the reason is the authors are trying to do the last 80% of work required to add the last 20% of features, which 99% of users will never need.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

I tihnk that's just a symptom of how FOSS devs think about GUIs. GUI is largely not something FOSS developers actually use. The design of FOSS GUIs makes it seem as though "GUI" is something they've read about in text books and personally only see value in as a fancy tmux. Consequently, the only mental model they have for someone who actually uses a GUI is the kind of person who only needs a web kiosk.

PavlovsCat 7y ago
> the only mental model they have for someone who actually uses a GUI is the kind of person who only needs a web kiosk They should check out Directory Opus -- and I mean really check out the documentation, scripting language, all of it. Now that is software. I suspect many have this mental model because it allows them to be lazy and make lame things, just like not taking 10 minutes to make the CSS nice is called "minimalistic" and not "fucking inept".

Gunax 7y ago

I think this is the most concise view of the problem I had read. I am going to use your comment as an analogy.

anderspitman 7y ago

> Every software has a reason to be complex Yep. The problem is that sometimes the reason is the authors are trying to do the last 80% of work required to add the last 20% of features, which 99% of users will never need.