Quote:
Originally Posted by luketheobscure
I think you will find the community quite resistant to change. Everyone I've spoken to about the look/feel/workflow of Calibre agree that it's terrible, but most of the lead developers don't seem to see what the problem is.
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What an ignorant, stupid and insulting comment to make.
MrMikel has it spot on - the biggest problem around changing the UI is finding a compromise that will keep the majority happy across all platforms *and* a range of beginners to advanced users. Unlike the ease with which some come on to mouth off about it, actually stepping up with a specific suggestion and being prepared to both adapt it and follow through requires a completely different level of time commitment and skill.
Personally I am in the "icons could be better" camp, such as the oft quoted trash icon. In my mind one of the cheapest potential wins that could be made would be a new matching icon set, as it would offer a very different look that has neither cross platform issues nor the controversy of moving/removing things from screen.
However *someone* who has both the graphical UI skills and is prepared to volunteer dozens of hours of their time has to step up for a change to be made. Not just make cheap shots from the peanut gallery. Speaking for myself I don't have those skills, so like most of the calibre developers I've spent thousands of unpaid hours trying to add value in other areas of calibre.
The OP on this thread appeared to have such graphical skills and I for one would have loved to have seen what they came up with. Likewise Kovid gave them all the information needed to experiment locally. However the OP has never responded further on this thread, so I can only guess they either lost interest or no longer had the spare time available. So how are the calibre devs at fault for that?
If you have a specific suggestion around other aspects of the UI in terms of workflow, by all means start a new thread and make it so others can agree or disagree. But don't toss your toys out of the pram if flaws are pointed out in it. Just because you think it is better for your purposes, doesn't mean everyone else will agree. And unless you are doing the development yourself then you are going to have to convince another developer why they should be spending their evenings/weekends implementing it. There may be types of usage that you haven't thought of, since most users only scratch the surface with a subset of calibre features. There may be practical considerations and technical complications (in particular the cross platform and Qt quirks/limitations).
And if all else fails presuming you have the skills you could always customise calibre for yourself as it is of course open source. Then post a screenshot and tell us why your version is better.