http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/2285/1/
> A Sneak Peek at Nautilus from Eazel
> GNOME, Eazel, and the Creative Process
>
> Michael Hall
>
> For the past two years, the GNOME project has been a fascinating
> project to watch. From the initial releases, which left some
> wishing its developers had stopped with its flexible and
> versatile panel, to the latest series of developments toward a
> comprehensive application and desktop environment, GNOME has
> moved, sometimes erratically, from "near unusable mess" to
> "project with potential" to a reasonable choice for the average
> Linux user's desktop.
>
> Ease of installation has been aided by Helix Code's splashy and
> simple installer program, and the problematic lack of an advanced
> mail client is being addressed by the upcoming release of the
> Evolution mailer and PIM.
>
> One of the problems the project seemingly deferred for the length
> of its existence, though, even as it overcame serious stability
> issues, was the file manager--a graphical and GNOMEified
> adaptation of the venerable Midnight Commander (GMC). Though GMC
> is usable, it has met with complaints about its general
> accessibility, and there are points where it's fairly difficult
> to perform some basic tasks with it.
>
> GMC's problems haven't been unknown to GNOME's developers, and
> plans have been in place for some time to eventually replace it.
> That's where startup Eazel comes in.
>
> Eazel, as most are aware by now, was founded by Andy Hertzfeld,
> formerly of Apple. Several of Eazel's founding members were on
> the original Macintosh design team, and bring with them decades
> of work in user interface design.
>
> Eazel's entry into the GNOME project has represented an
> interesting case study in the meeting of disparate cultures.
> Where the Macintosh's interface design was disciplined and
> focused, GNOME's development trajectory has been seemingly
> erratic, with accusations of usability being at the bottom of the
> list of the designers' priorities. Some of these accusations are
> misplaced: the GNOME project has a team that works on interface
> issues. On the other hand, there are still some problematic
> inconsistencies that crop up even though the quality of the
> overall project has improved steadily, and it's clear that Eazel
> has a lot to offer the project in this area.
one example of which is having another UI expert maintain the
GNOME UI guidelines:
| I'd like to take over as maintainer of the Gnome UI guidelines.
|
| I'm the UI lead over at Eazel, was the UI Lead at Apple for 5
| years on the Toolbox and the Appearance project, and was the
| lead contributor (read: author of before the tech pubs people
| stepped in) of the Mac OS 8 Human Interface Guidelines.
|
| Please let me know what needs to be done to make the transition.
-- Arlo Rose, 28 June 2000
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-doc-list/2000-June/001401.html
(responding to a request for someone to take that project on)
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-doc-list/2000-June/001387.html
back to the article:
> Eazel's Nautilus, a file manager, will be part of the upcoming
> October release of GNOME 1.4. This newest GNOME release will
> represent a stepping stone between the 1.x releases and next
> year's 2.0. The presence of Nautilus, Evolution, and Bonobo will
> be the most distinguishing features of this intermediate release.
>
> Darin Adler, whose position with Eazel is described by the
> company's publicists as roughly that of Vice President of
> Software Engineering, took some time to discuss his involvement
> with Nautilus with us, providing some perspective on what it's
> like to work alongside the GNOME team as well as some of the
> considerations that went into Eazel's decision to take up the
> task of enhancing GNOME.
>
> Adler, like many working at Eazel, has roots deep in Macintosh
> history. He was the technical lead for Apple's System 7 release,
> and he brings nearly 25 years of programming (including some time
> with UNIX) to the table.
:
(that's just one-sixth of the article, see the first URI above
for the rest)
I don't have much use for file managers myself, but I'm really
glad that there are companies like Eazel working on improving the
usability of the Linux desktop in general: hopefully they'll also
fix a lot of other long-standing issues with the Linux desktop,
like the lack of a normal cut and paste function or decent fonts.
Related is this older message from Jim Gettys (W3C alumnus [1])
on Eazel, X, et al.:
] Until yesterday, Eazel did not even had a home page worth of
] name. They've wanted things to be low key: if they want this to
] change, I'm sure they'll let us know.
]
] In any case, I never thought I'd see the day when Andy would be
] working on top of the X Window System. From my point of view,
] this is greatly gratifying: X has from its inception tried to be
] a system to enable good GUI's to be built (rather than itself
] being a GUI: this distinguishes it from most other window
] systems).
]
] It has always been frustrating to me that such lame ones resulted
] (until the better ones like gnome and kde). I'm sure Andy et.
] al. will be great help to Gnome to become best in the world.
-- Jim Gettys, 15 Feb 2000
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-list/2000-February/036658.html
[1]
http://www.w3.org/People/Alumni#jg
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/