ICU being bloated is a valid statement. It significantly increase image size and RAM usage. Some users see Haiku as lightweight OS and want have as less as possible bloat, they may not need support of every language ever existing on Earth. Having ability to build functional image without ICU can be also useful for bootstrapping and embedded systems/emulators. ICU data can be split into separate data files that may be better handled and shared between multiple ICU versions (need investigation).
Yes, I agree that ICU problem have a very small priority comparing to other more serious bugs and unimplemented Haiku functionality. Also modern OS distributions such as Linux distros are much more bloated than Haiku. But it is still be nice to make Haiku less bloated if possible. Repeating about the same problem periodically can be useful because someone can eventually react to it and actually implement a solution. Someone may periodically ask me for making something for Haiku, I don’t mind if it will be not too annoying. I use such responses for deciding task priorities.
Anyway complaining about ICU is definitely not an action that deserve ban.
That only means it is big not bloated. You can‘t tell if it is bloated or not unless you actualy evaluate it in context. This was not done.
That is the entire problem with the discussion, it was complaining about a problem that is perceived but not actually proven, and attempts to constructively engage are ignored.
Anyway, here is what cb88 said initially in that ICU thread:
Because ICU itself is ultra bloated. It also uses STL heavily and its usage of it is bloated. By comparison the competition is about 60x smaller.
No source for that “about 60x smaller” (despite being asked for clarification in later messages)
“bloated” has no definition. So this isn’t actionable, how do we “unbloat” something?
The thread continues on with “someone has to measure it” and other demands like that.
So, yes, we can have a discussion about how to reduce the memory footprint of Haiku, but, that discussion is not helped by cb88 interventions. that’s what I was saying earlier when I said we were a bit stuck at the “level 0” of discussion. We are now debating the meaning of words like “bloated”, explaining what ICU is used for in Haiku (it’s not UTF-8 processing), checking how efficient it actually is (making CLDR data half as large as the original distribution, which to me does not qualify as “bloat”, there is just a lot of data there that may not be useful to us), and so on.
Meanwhile, no progress is made on actually trying to fix any of those problems. No discussion about the compromises we may have to make (such as removing some less frequently used languages and measuring how much space it saves), wether we can make things optional, etc.
So, it’s not about the topic, it’s about the way it is discussed, and wether we can move forward with it. It seems some people are just there to complain about a problem (real or not) and have no interest in seeing the problem solved (then they would have nothing to complain about).
That remark he made doesn’t really seem like a problem. Bloated is relative? I suppose it can be, but then relative to his experience, maybe it is bloated. Coming from Windows, it doesn’t seem so at all. Coming from BeOS, maybe it could seem that way.
There seems to be some online-personality conflict here. I don’t think any of his comments (that I’ve seen) have warranted any action or complaint. Some things he says might be wrong, some things are just opinions. As long as nothing inappropriate is being said or there’s no harassment or rule-breaking, I don’t see the use in discussing anyones status here.
The other issue is that this isn’t going to encourage anyone to “do better”. Now there will be this feeling, “If a lot of people disagree with me and get annoyed with me, they’ll try to have me kicked off the forum.” Or, “Hey, you’re that guy who tried to get me banned from the forum.”
Yes, “bloated”, without numbers, is relative or means nothing. In a useful comparision, there would need to be stated how many MB ( in this case ) are to be considered bloated, why, where they are ( or not ) used, and the alternatives. Just saying “It is bloated because I say it is bloated, now you go investigate why it is bloated” doesn´t help anyone.
The part of the rule-breaking is what was explained in past posts : some people go to the brink of breaking the rules. Then when left alone, this “enlarging” keeps going, like inflating a baloon, until it explodes.
And nowhere are the problems with “people disagree with me”. Some people like the Alt, Ctrl, Win keys in one configuration, some on other. Some prefer Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, others Alt-C/Alt-V. We can discuss that a lot, and nobody will want to kick others from the forum.
But when someone starts the “Ctrl-C bad, kill Ctrl-C” and refuses to provide explanation of the reasons for that opinion, then that person starts to be seen as not helping, and just making others waste their time asking for clarifications, trying to explain how things work ( or how the key mappings can be changed ) , etc, because the person will only keep insisting that “it is bad!”.
What is the edge of rule breaking? The rules should be clearly defined, and you either are or are not breaking them.
Windows is trash. I don’t need to back this up. It’s an opinion. It’s also true, but that’s another story. Maybe if he doesn’t like some package system or library that’s being used, he might say it’s bloated and terrible and not offer explanation. Who cares? We should spend the time we have on this forum discussing the things we DO want to discuss. I’ve seen maybe 2 dozen comments from cb88. They took me a total of 50 seconds to read through. A lesser man might have taken 80.
Also, I’ve not seen these Control-Alt discussion. BeOS default is Alt. Haiku default should be Alt. If people want to change it, they can change it on their own computer. We don’t need to copy Windows on interface. I will find this post, state my piece, and then edit the off-topic stuff on this one.
You did bring it up, maybe you’ll come to wish you hadn’t.
Seems you did not understand when text references an example. So, to explain it to you, the Ctrl-Alt part was an example, took from the discussions about this in the past. I really do not care which side cb88 took, or not, because probably his opinions in this would need to be ignored.
I think this is part of the issue. What did I say that was offensive? I didn’t say anything offensive. But if you look at particular words, and you don’t hear my voice or see my face, you may get a different idea of what I actually mean.
I think this may be what’s happening in the cb88 case. Now, you could say they need to formulate their discussion better so they aren’t misunderstood, but then you may get misunderstood by some other party involved. But the best way is to try not to have any reaction or feeling to a perceived insult, because there might not be one.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Or in this case maybe ignorance. Or not, but it’s best to not overreact.
Votes can turn into popularity contests. Someone could easily be disliked, yet be perfectly respectable, aside from the fact that he developed hot dog stand theme for Haiku.
The problem with the discussion being public in a “name and shame” way is that many people would just quit the forum at that point. So regardless of what the topic decided it’s a foregone conclusion because of the approach. Who knows maybe cb88 is now long gone?
It’s unpleasant to see this kind of discussions in the forum.
If the user is missbehaving, then it’s the duty of mods to tell the user to not transgress the rules or annoy other users, otherwise a sanction may be imposed for the goodness of the forum. But this must be on private, not in public, shaming the accused as it was a “witch hunt”.
What is annoying though? I’ve had people get annoyed when I asked BeOS questions. “Why are you still using BeOS, you can’t do anything with it, blah blah blah”. They may have found me annoying, I could’ve found them annoying. What good does it do to complain though? It only aggravates things. Just let it go, and it hardly ever comes up.
They are clearly defined, that does not mean that breaking them is a hard cut though. Some parts are up for interpretation partly, and that is a good thing. If the rules explicitly say „don‘t say ass“ The people will just use a sysnonym, while somebody trying to write assesment gets banned.
Making rules overly complicated and specific hurts the community a whole lot more since this only helps people intentionally skirting or breaking them. While it hurts those who genuinely try have a proper discussion and also massively hurts moderators by tying them down with massive ammounts of useless bureaucracy.
Really, the rules now are fine. And discussing this here is fine too.
This is worded as a backhanded threat. I would agree that is offensive. Don’t do that.
If it does not seem offensive to you the take this as feedback that it definitely does so to other people.
I think it’s already possible to ignore someone. Its replies appear then hidden. Go on the profile, choose ignore. You can’t ignore other moderators though :-)
A threat to do what? I could threaten someone that I’ll bake them so many cherry pies, they’ll wish they hadn’t told me they like cherries. In this instance, the threat was for me to go discuss something in the correct topic. Now more people will have to hear what I’m thinking. It’s an obvious joke at my own expense. If it was insulting to anyone, it was to my own self.
There are a lot of international members here, and for many English is not their first language. So im sorry if someone took it to be offensive.
