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Topic: Questions to the Developer (Read 37175 times)

Questions to the Developer

Here's some I have come up with

- Why dependent on Qt5? This dependency makes it difficult to install. 
- Will the GUI be skinnable with old Opera skins?
- Any plans to implement the startup dialog (options 'continue from last', 'home page', etc.)? Old Opera had excellent crash management.
- What are the plans with otter.conf? I would like a human-readable configuration file where absolutely everything is there. An otter:config page would be nice as a perfect mirror of otter.conf, but the conf file is more important.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #1 –
I asked Emdek if he could put up a sticky or two with some information, but he hasn't gotten around to it yet. However, I believe I can answer at least one question.

Quote from: ersi on
- Will the GUI be skinnable with old Opera skins?

Yes. On that topic, you can find a 1GB archive of all (?) skins here (via).

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #2 –
I see, thanks. Looks like I have to learn to browse the discussions on Github and mirror some relevant stuff here.

Another question:
- What are the developer's favourite browsers? Specifically, is there some other browser inspiring the development besides Opera?

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #3 –
Quote from: ersi on

- Why dependent on Qt5? This dependency makes it difficult to install. 

Qt5 allows to easily create multi platform applications, without it it could be even more difficult to built it from sources. ;-)
And surely it would take much more time to develop.

Quote from: ersi on

- Any plans to implement the startup dialog (options 'continue from last', 'home page', etc.)? Old Opera had excellent crash management.

Yes, it is planned, but probably defaulting to continue from last session, as it is now.

Quote from: ersi on

- What are the plans with otter.conf? I would like a human-readable configuration file where absolutely everything is there. An otter:config page would be nice as a perfect mirror of otter.conf, but the conf file is more important.

It will stay as central configuration file, with to level structure   sections and keys.
Stuff like site specific preferences etc. will use own files, probably SQLite based storage, for better efficiency (fast URL matching is very important).
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Emdek on

Quote from: ersi on

- Why dependent on Qt5? This dependency makes it difficult to install. 

Qt5 allows to easily create multi platform applications, without it it could be even more difficult to built it from sources. ;-)
And surely it would take much more time to develop.

My question stems from my lack of understanding of what Qt is at all. As a matter of principle, too many or too obscure dependencies make installation difficult. In this case, the issue is that Qt5 is not an easy-peasily available package that would handily self-install when one attempts installing Otter that requires it.

I managed to install Otter on Manjaro Linux with the help of Yaourt on third try. I have not managed to install it on any other distro. It's because "building a package" is like Chinese to me. If make and install don't straightforwardly lead to the desired result, I simply don't know what to do. And most people who are newer to Linux than me, they don't even know about make and install and if they know, they might be impatient. If we are making a product for people to use, it should be relatively easy to install.

But okay for now, it's alpha.

Quote from: Emdek on
Quote from: ersi on

- Any plans to implement the startup dialog (options 'continue from last', 'home page', etc.)? Old Opera had excellent crash management.

Yes, it is planned, but probably defaulting to continue from last session, as it is now.
The default for the dialogue should be to show itself when the user attempts to launch the app again after crash - just like Opera Presto does. For example, when there is a specific page that makes it crash inevitably, then going back to that page by default would make it crash again. Which is something that already happened to me with Otter. Otter crashed on me on a page that pushed a download that I refused. So, launching it again takes it to the same page and I get the same download that I don't want. It's not good to create an endless crash loop.

There is much common sense in many details implemented in Opera. I am confident that this is the main drive in the development, so keep it up :)

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #5 –
@ersi,  there is no need to use packages specific to distribution, SDK (linked in INSTALL file) should work in most cases. ;-)
It should be possible to create package that would bundle all libraries required for Linux, just like one for win32 (where it is required).
Adoption of Qt5 would be faster if KDE5 would be already available, that would force mainstream distributions to package it properly...

Quote from: ersi on
The default for the dialogue should be to show itself when the user attempts to launch the app again after crash - just like Opera Presto does.

Sure, that's planned too. ;-)
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #7 –
@Frenzie, first beta is planned for 01.04.2014, it should give enough time for translators while giving enough time to introduce bigger changes in strings that can be translated.
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #8 –
Is it known yet how many strings there'll be to translate?

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Emdek on

@ersi, nope, we will use formats used by Qt Linguist.

Something I must learn to use then. I installed QtCreator to my main machine. ("Main" only means it's the more capable machine, not that I use it more often.)

Is there a translator for Finnish and Estonian? Those are my first languages.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #10 –
This seems to be issue #32. If you need some input on English and Dutch, feel free to run it by me.

At a quick glance, here's a string that's a little problematic in multiple ways:
Quote
Inform websites that user allows to be tracked

should be more like
Quote
Inform websites that the user allows tracking


You could also consider making it more personal:
Quote
Inform websites that I want to be tracked
Inform websites that I do not want to be tracked


Or like this to keep with the allow theme:
Quote
Inform websites that I want to allow tracking
Inform websites that I do not want to allow tracking


That's just at a quick glance. There's also "Enable Search Suggestions" under the Search tab, which seems inconsistent with the capitalization elsewhere.

I could change such things independently and offer them up as a pull request, but I can't seem to find the current language sources.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #11 –
@Frenzie
Such fine-tuning of the lingo used in the app should be a non-issue if the language files were hackable and shareable in the fan community. This is what I did with Opera. I didn't like the Estonian translation, so I used Finnish, and "fixed" it further to my own satisfaction - and shared the result with anyone interested. This is how I imagine it should be done with Otter too.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #12 –
Sure, but there are two separate issues at hand. The original string was just plain ungrammatical, so the grammatical equivalent should be adopted no matter what. But besides that, I don't believe speaking of the user as "the user" is actually appropriate wording in this case.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I don't believe speaking of the user as "the user" is actually appropriate wording in this case.

Why? I think geek browsers have geek users. You disagree?

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #14 –
I don't understand what you're trying to say.

If I said "Frenzie doesn't understand what ersi is trying to say" that'd be odd no matter what. :P

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #15 –
Which words don't you understand?

I had a question about your statement that it's inappropriate to speak of the user as "the user" in this case. The way I understood it, I thought you meant that you prefer to define "user" broader, to include newbies, and you have an issue the way I define users - those who are ready to read and re-write configuration files. This is why I said that geek browsers have geek users.

Maybe I misunderstood your statement.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #16 –
@Frenzie, currently there are 573 strings, but not all of them are unique.
And yes, "audit" for source strings is needed. ;-)
I would go for more neutral phrasing, feel free to create pull request, one bigger commit containing all mentioned fixes (probably all values for DNT need to be fixed).

@ersi, well, in our case it will be a bit harder, there will be editable source files (XML based, example) and binary files. Source files had to be compiled using lrelease from Qt SDK.
For sure Opera like plain text files with identifiers are simpler for quick edit but this is the only advantage of such system...
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #17 –
Quote from: ersi on
I had a question about your statement that it's inappropriate to speak of the user as "the user" in this case. The way I understood it, I thought you meant that you prefer to define "user" broader, to include newbies, and you have an issue the way I define users - those who are ready to read and re-write configuration files. This is why I said that geek browsers have geek users.

Perhaps my use was more technical than I thought, which would itself be an example of inappropriate wording.

You can find a quick overview of the CCC-model of text quality here, which defines appropriate wording as:
Quote
Sentence structure and choice of words must be neither too difficult nor too easy.
Also, the middle course has to be steered between too much terseness and long-
windedness, between “too boring” and “too familiar.” The quality of a text is also
negatively influenced if the author fails to strike the proper tone. If the reader is
addressed too patronizingly or too arrogantly, it has repercussions on the
transmission of information.

I do not believe the style is appropriate to the text type because it is or should be aimed at the user, not the developer. The user is me, not some unknown person.

Quote from: Emdek on

@Frenzie, currently there are 573 strings, but not all of them are unique.
And yes, "audit" for source strings is needed. ;-)
I would go for more neutral phrasing, feel free to create pull request, one bigger commit containing all mentioned fixes (probably all values for DNT need to be fixed).

Not today for sure. But what's the path to the strings?

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Not today for sure. But what's the path to the strings?

It's here:
https://github.com/Emdek/otter/blob/master/src/ui/PreferencesDialog.ui
In QtCreator it is available in Forms tree, just remember to set tab bar back to "General". ;-)
Nadszedł już czas, najwyższy czas, nienawiść zniszczyć w sobie.
The time has come, the high time, to destroy hatred in oneself.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #19 –
@Frenzie
Right, so you were phrasing as per guidelines familiar to you, whereas I was not thinking in English in the first place. I have always been ready to rewrite things readily rewriteable. Lang files in Opera provided a good opportunity for this. Sad if Otter won't make it equally easy.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #20 –
@Emdek: Thanks! :)

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #21 –
For the terms I see in these threads about Otter browser, I suppose it doesn't work in Windows...
A matter of attitude.

Re: Questions to the Developer

Reply #22 –
It aspires to be cross-platform (which should mean Linux, Win and Mac desktops at least), so let's hope the first beta release will be that.