On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, Michal Jaegermann wrote: >Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 16:42:57 -0700 >From: Michal Jaegermann <michal@harddata.com> >To: xfree86-list@redhat.com >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >List-Id: Red Hat XFree86 list <xfree86-list.redhat.com> >Subject: Re: Antialiasing blurs vertical font elements > >On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 09:37:54PM -0500, Mike A. Harris wrote: >> >> That's quite odd. Most of the comments I hear from new users >> about the font quality in RHL 8.0 is very positive praise. Very >> few complaints at all. > >Maybe because they do not bother to complain? > >I just came back from Supercomputing 2002 conference and show in >Baltimore. Linux and Red Hat in particular were present really >everywhere. Red Hat 8.0 installations showed up but they were truly >a rare sight. On few occasions participants were asked specifically >what they are running. Among other things lots and lots of 7.3 and >7.2 Red Hat systems. People using 8.0 were a scarce oddity but very >numerous statements of a sort "we tried 8.0 and it does not work; we >will wait with updates for something usable". Fonts issues were >likely not on the top of "broken" list but generally people were not >very happy. They tend to dismiss troubles because x.0 releases had >"traditionally" sizeable rosters of issues but it seems that they >may be for a long wait. In my experience, people's reactions to 8.0 are very much the opposite. There will be naysayers always with every release, however (fortunately) they are the extreme minority, and not the other way around. Since people tend to dwell on the negative and provide negative feedback more than positive feedback, and since I've seen _MUCH_ more positive feedback about font quality in Red Hat Linux 8.0 than I've seen negative, I tend to believe the font quality is much better than in any prior release. Yes, there are some that disagree, but they are the _extreme_ minority. This has absolutely nothing to do with an x.0 release either. The whole "x.0 releases of anything are buggy, I'll wait for x.1" is nothing more than a placebo effect that people have. It is nothing more than psychology. People go in ahead of time *expecting* any software's x.0 release to be buggy, and after setting themselves up with this preconception, *any* problems they encounter are blown totally out of proportion and blamed on being a buggy x.0 release. I've witnessed this for years in a variety of software. If we (and all other software projects/products) *never* released an x.0 release, and instead started out a new series with x.1, or even just blew away the whole version number uselessness and started naming products foo 2002, foo 2003, etc. then the whole "x.0 releases are buggy" psychological phenomenon would disappear instantly - however nothing would really change about development practice or release engineering. Version numbers are truely meaningless IMHO, and are merely for marketing purposes really, only with the unfortunate psychological effects described above. I'm just surprised that so few people realize this, and sucker themselves into believing it. Personally, I can't wait until the distro ditches the idea of version numbered releases and goes with something more modern, but wether or not that ever happens is neither here nor there. $0.02 -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc. _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
