A nice user by the nickname of PelleTut just dropped by the #okular IRC channel and after me telling him "use evince instead of okular if you like it more/does what you want", he answered with a nice "lol, retard" and then quit.
Great way to convince us to implement those missing features!
Maybe he was just calling himself a retard for not thinking of such a simple answer?
ReplyDeleteDon’t want to judge without having read the whole conversation, but “Use Evince instead of Okular if it has the features you are looking for” doesn’t sound like an answer leaving the door open for your feature request to be heard.
ReplyDeleteI would not call anyone retarded, but I would probably shut up if I get an answer like that.
I can not really imagine what he is missing. Okular ist one of the few KDE programms which just work and have (appart from real tabs) all features I could wish for. Must be a troll.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is missing: An option to resize an pdf to the paper size if you want to print it. Like Acrobat Reader has.
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous: embedded PDF annotation support is a big one for many people, judging by the bug report
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to believe what some people think they are entitled to. But my personal experience is that this does not come from malice, but merely from the ignorance of the real effort it takes to develop software.
ReplyDeleteI like Martin's post a lot, , but having been in both sides of the fence, as an unproductive complainer, and as a volunteer developer being insulted by unproductive complainers, I understand that no level of reasoning will satisfy such users. They will consider a post like Martin's condescending.
The only approach that I have found effective is to offer them an alternative that requires an effort from *them*. When this happens, they realize that they are not actually *that* bothered by the issue to spend actual time/effort/money to fix it.
Something like this should be quite effective: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/bugfixing-service/, but it is also asking for a working prototype, to write up a wiki page describing their proposed fix, or just merely to set up a build environment so we can they can test a few things. The "could you setup a build environment so I can send you patches to test?" is almost always the end of the conversation.
Martin's post is this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/09/developer-and-user-interaction/
Okular is really astoundingly good at rendering pdfs though. Mac's preview has a tendency to chew all the cpu and hang, and adobe's is so slow by comparison.
ReplyDeleteEmbedded pdf annotations would be nice, sure, but I'll take something that reads pdfs any day.
I can understand that "PelleTut" wasn't exactly pleased with the answer you gave - to him I think it sounded like "We don't want your opinion, go away".
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: And not being pleased gives him the right to insult me?
ReplyDelete“And not being pleased gives him the right to insult me?”
ReplyDeleteNo, but maybe you should think about whether such answers as yours are good for the community.
@The User: Sure, "the community" (in quotes because i do not think PelleTut is part of the community nor is interested in it) would be much happier if I obeyed the orders of every random person that happens to cross my way and thus thinks he is the most important Okular user ever.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is "the community" to start learning that being a tyrant might work with some people but obviously not in KDE.
I do not know the context, but your answer simply does not sound polite or clever, since it makes people feel distracted.
ReplyDelete"The User" telling a user to use the software that fits his needs is not polite or clever?
ReplyDeleteAre you that blind that you do not see that this answer was not polite? He did probably ask why a certain feature is not supported in Okular, if there are chances for it to be added, and he probably mentioned that it is supported by Evince. Instead of explaining him that the development has a different focus currently and that you do not have any time for it or that you do not like the feature for specific reasons, you told him not to ask for features in Okular because he could use Evince. Maybe he still prefers Okular because of other features? Isn't it legitimate to ask if there is a chance for a new feature even if it is supported by Evince? Without further context I do not see a legitimation for such an answer and it seems to be impolite because you did not give further context. And of course it was not clever because you distracted another user.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of politeness, are you aware you are close to not being polite by calling me not clever and blind so many times in so few sentences?
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting that on the issue of lacking of context, you decide that the context would be in favor of a random user instead of a fellow developer, so much for community, eh?
Anyway, let's stop this here. I am not interested in keep losing my time arguing with you or anyone else thus I will delete any further comment in this thread.