On 22.05.2012 18:10, Erik Albers wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 05/21/2012 04:37 PM, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
we are currently preparing a major update to PDFReaders.org, adding:
- a more appealing and cleaner "home"-page, with *one
recommendation* for the auto-detected platform
do you really think that is a good idea to have just one recommendation for the auto-detected platform?
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
Thank you!
On 22.05.2012 19:14, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
On 22.05.2012 18:10, Erik Albers wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 05/21/2012 04:37 PM, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
we are currently preparing a major update to PDFReaders.org, adding:
- a more appealing and cleaner "home"-page, with *one
recommendation* for the auto-detected platform
do you really think that is a good idea to have just one recommendation for the auto-detected platform?
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
Thanks for commenting Erik!!
This is a valid criticism, and we discussed it before. The result was: * we do not advertise one reader, but different readers for different platforms by different people, AND we are not affiliated with the creators, so we are more neutral * we also only advertise Free Software readers anyway, so were not completely neutral in "market" sense before either * we could discuss recommending at random one out of two or three if that many are available and equally useful (usually we are happy to be able to recommend one, but for evince and sumatra this might make sense) * in any case the gain in usability will greatly outweigh the negative effects
What do you think? Especially about the third * ?
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On 05/22/2012 01:22 PM, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
sorry, I will keep on the mailing list now
This is a valid criticism, and we discussed it before. The result was: * we do not advertise one reader, but different readers for different platforms by different people, AND we are not affiliated with the creators, so we are more neutral
I understand this point. But does the administrator from the ministry (the guy I mentioned in the mail before) understand this point? If he clicks on the link and he gets one recommendation, he 1) maybe is not interested in reading, so he thinks this particular program is the general recommendation of pdfreaders.org -> what makes the page an advertisement 2) he cannot be sure that there is no affiliation with the creators. Maybe unofficial? If there are "many" recommendations, you can be more sure that there is no connection between the page and the creators.
- we also only advertise Free Software readers anyway, so were not
completely neutral in "market" sense before either * we could discuss recommending at random one out of two or three if that many are available and equally useful (usually we are happy to be able to recommend one, but for evince and sumatra this might make sense)
sounds funny, but then I wonder: If there are for example three different pdfreaders that are "equally useful", still they have some minor differences (disk space, start-up time, page appearance...) that maybe makes one better than the other. So who is to decide from which level these readers are "equally uselful" or one is better than the other so there can be made a single recommendation? This sounds like a lot of work and discussion for me.
And, on the other hand: Some people put focus on start-up time, other on appearance, for example. So why not let them choose on their own which reader is to recommend, which not? Surely I am not the "normal" user, but when I first saw the page, I was happy to see all pdfreaders stated free by the FSFE. The only thing, I had to do then was to test 3 different ones and chose the one I would like to use.
- in any case the gain in usability will greatly outweigh the
negative effects
I think I cannot see this point, as I do not see the gain in usability with just one recommendation left. But of course, I think you are much more into this campaign so I believe you, this will be a gain in usability.
What do you think? Especially about the third * ?
I think I come late to the party and you already thought a lot about my concerns. So please go ahead, if you think the positive effects of restructuring outweigh the negative ones.
best, Erik
- --
Erik Albers [ ] Free Software Foundation Europe [ ][ ][ ] Policy Team [ ] Your donation powers our work! [http://fsfe.org/donate/]
Contact me in < Deutsch/English/Español > via: Mail eal@fsfe.org Jabber eal@jabber.fsfe.org Phone +49-30-27595290
Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. is a German Verein registered at the Registergericht Hamburg (VR 17030).
What do you think? Especially about the third * ?
I think I come late to the party and you already thought a lot about my concerns. So please go ahead, if you think the positive effects of restructuring outweigh the negative ones.
I do value any feedback and I want to discuss your concerns, but some things were reached after lengthy (and heated) discussions in mail and real life, at German team meetings, at FSCONS... also Richard was involved for FSF, and altogether there was a very strong majority for recommending *one* reader to the user. This wasn't mine or Mk's intention in the beginning (and we opposed it for a while), but the discussion around it and different feedback from different people convinced me in the end. I think it is the way to go, but it doesn't mean that we can't rotate the recommended reader, or that we don't clearly state that there are alternatives.
This mockup shows the rough design Richard, I and others agreed on earlier this year: http://soulrebel.in-berlin.de/pub/pdfreaders_redesign/new/1_recommended.jpeg
If we have multiple working readers, we can rotate the recommended one. The decision making about this would be with the pdfreaders team, as it was in the past. I think we will not argue about boot-up time, the main concern is whether the reader is installable and usable by the target audience.
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
On 22.05.2012 18:10, Erik Albers wrote:
- a more appealing and cleaner "home"-page, with *one
recommendation* for the auto-detected platform
do you really think that is a good idea to have just one recommendation for the auto-detected platform?
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
Where do we find that? I guessed and tried https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/ and http://pdfreaders.org/about.en.html but it's not listed on either.
Thanks,
On 23.05.2012 00:02, MJ Ray wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
On 22.05.2012 18:10, Erik Albers wrote:
- a more appealing and cleaner "home"-page, with *one
recommendation* for the auto-detected platform
do you really think that is a good idea to have just one recommendation for the auto-detected platform?
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
Where do we find that? I guessed and tried https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/ and http://pdfreaders.org/about.en.html but it's not listed on either.
Thanks,
Sorry about that, the list is pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.… but you can just send to feedback(@)pdfreaders.org that redirects to our list and allows posting from non-members!
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
Sorry about that, the list is pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.… but you can just send to feedback(@)pdfreaders.org that redirects to our list and allows posting from non-members!
OK, right, so as we can't actually join the discussion on the closed pdfreaders list and the blog evilly locks out visually-impaired users, can we just continue discussion on discussion@ please?
It works and I'd really welcome this being discussed openly. pdfreaders.org is a great site and really useful in helping people realise that the Microsoft/Adobe/... system is not the only one.
I would like to support Erik Albers's point that only offering a single recommendation on the homepage defeats the recent work asking people to stop the Adobe adverts;
- and also note that the viewing platform may not be the one we want a recommendation for.
On the substance of https://wiki.fsfe.org/PDFreaders/todo2012/Overview-Page
Vindaloo still works fine on GNU/Linux - the frontend may not have been updated since 2005, but the underlying Poppler library has, so the app's kept improving in use. It isn't currently listed for "Free Operating Systems" (why not?). I can't comment on OSX - I'd expect it to work there, but I don't know of current OSX binaries for it.
Is there a download site with an AlternateReader binary with a current certificate? 1.08(4) failed to install for me, giving an "Expired Certificate" error.
The site probably shouldn't recommend Evince or Okular to someone not using Gnome or KDE already, as it'll seem like a really big install.
Thanks for your work on this,
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Hi All,
MJ Ray wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
Sorry about that, the list is pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.… but you can just send to feedback(@)pdfreaders.org that redirects to our list and allows posting from non-members!
OK, right, so as we can't actually join the discussion on the closed pdfreaders list and the blog evilly locks out visually-impaired users, can we just continue discussion on discussion@ please?
I would like to support Erik Albers's point that only offering a single recommendation on the homepage defeats the recent work asking people to stop the Adobe adverts;
I'm too concerned about recommending only one option per OS. This would cost the neutrality we are striving for (we want neutrality, don't we?).
I also would like to point out that there are some users who do not wish to browse through a possibly long list of potential alternatives and then choose one. There are some people out there who just want to use a software that works (free software would be nice to have, of course).
Perhaps we could leave the list like it is and add a (rather tiny) link to a recommendation. This way lazy users can just take that one.
Regards,
Phil
On 23.05.2012 01:20, MJ Ray wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
Sorry about that, the list is pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.… but you can just send to feedback(@)pdfreaders.org that redirects to our list and allows posting from non-members!
OK, right, so as we can't actually join the discussion on the closed pdfreaders list and the blog evilly locks out visually-impaired users, can we just continue discussion on discussion@ please?
No. This leads to many duplicate discussions, resulting in a lot of frustration and wasted time on all sides[1] -- as this situation already shows. If you want to discuss the future of pdfreaders in depth, you are very welcome to join the pdfreaders list, please contact mk@fsfe! If you do not want to do this, you can still write suggestions to feedback@pdfreaders or edit the wiki directly, (e.g. adding Vindaloo to GNU/Linux section). I will look into the blog's captcha, although I tried posting multiple comments (even spam-like), and I was never asked for one.
Is there a reason for this list not being advertised anywhere? Even on the listman pages?
Perhaps there'd be more people interested in the discussion? But like others in this conversation, we didn't even know the list existed..
(Sorry to anyone who receives this twice..)
On 23 May 2012 12:29, Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org wrote:
On 23.05.2012 01:20, MJ Ray wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
Sorry about that, the list is pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.… but you can just send to feedback(@)pdfreaders.org that redirects to our list and allows posting from non-members!
OK, right, so as we can't actually join the discussion on the closed pdfreaders list and the blog evilly locks out visually-impaired users, can we just continue discussion on discussion@ please?
No. This leads to many duplicate discussions, resulting in a lot of frustration and wasted time on all sides[1] -- as this situation already shows. If you want to discuss the future of pdfreaders in depth, you are very welcome to join the pdfreaders list, please contact mk@fsfe! If you do not want to do this, you can still write suggestions to feedback@pdfreaders or edit the wiki directly, (e.g. adding Vindaloo to GNU/Linux section). I will look into the blog's captcha, although I tried posting multiple comments (even spam-like), and I was never asked for one.
-- ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ Best Regards, │ Free Software Foundation Europe █▉ │ Hannes Hauswedell │ German Team █▉█▉█▉ │ │ Coordinator for pdfreaders.org ▉▉ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘
[1] and third parties annoyed by double posting to multiple lists.
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
On 23 May 2012 11:40, Craig Errington ce@fsfe.org wrote:
Is there a reason for this list not being advertised anywhere? Even on the listman pages?
There is: This is not a discussion list, this is a list used to coordinate the campaign. I.e., if you want access, you should be prepared to work on the campaign, not just discuss matters.
Perhaps there'd be more people interested in the discussion? But like others in this conversation, we didn't even know the list existed..
There have been opportunities to discuss the project on this list. See the archives for Apr 17 and Jan 21. I do not mean it as a discussion killer, but I can certainly understand why Hannes does not want to try to keep track of several mailing lists.
Cheers,
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
On 23.05.2012 01:20, MJ Ray wrote:
OK, right, so as we can't actually join the discussion on the closed pdfreaders list and the blog evilly locks out visually-impaired users, can we just continue discussion on discussion@ please?
No. This leads to many duplicate discussions, resulting in a lot of frustration and wasted time on all sides[1] -- as this situation already shows.
I had frustration and wasted time and had to double-post already, before there was any discussion. As it looks like one of us will have frustration and wasted time anyway, we might as well have it with discussion rather than without! ;-)
If you do not want to do this, you can still write suggestions to feedback@pdfreaders or edit the wiki directly, (e.g. adding Vindaloo to GNU/Linux section).
It looks like I would have to pay to edit the wiki, so please take the suggestions previously written.
I will look into the blog's captcha, although I tried posting multiple comments (even spam-like), and I was never asked for one.
I can't explain that. Maybe it likes you and not me... and if it's not querying spam-like comments, it doesn't sound like it is testing for spam at all!
I think Spam Karma 2 has been broken for many years (I've yet to see it work, at least) and is not fit for use. I suggest a combination of BlogSpam.net and wp-spamfree (in a non-javascript configuration) as better alternatives.
Hope that helps,
On 22 May 2012 16:02, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org
On 22.05.2012 18:10, Erik Albers wrote:
- a more appealing and cleaner "home"-page, with *one
recommendation* for the auto-detected platform
do you really think that is a good idea to have just one recommendation for the auto-detected platform?
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
Where do we find that? I guessed and tried https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/ and http://pdfreaders.org/about.en.html but it's not listed on either.
I suppose you will write to mk.
Cheers,