On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:29:50 -0500, Gregg Thomason threegee@mac.com wrote:
Be careful with the term "bloat", as it inspires religious fervor. Consider: Emacs includes a Tetris game and psychotherapist (albeit a poor one), among other things.
Poor one? All those late nights in the lab make Eliza's advice seem pretty good to me ;-)
On the opposite side of the coin, think about the number of people who demand this feature. Just about every professional programmer's editor on Mac, Linux and Windows has it. This has become a bullet-point you *have* to add, no matter how nonsensical.
I don't mind the program getting large, but I do mind UI bloat. IMO that's how most bloat is first noticed, if the UI for all the features somebody doesn't need is always intruding on their workflow, then it is "bloat". If the UI is well designed, the person who doesn't need said feature isn't affected by the bloat, but the person who does need the feature can still easily use it.
A plug-in system sounds like one implementation that satisfies this requirement. If a feature is not needed the plugin is not loaded and the program looks and behaves as if the feature isn't there at all. Tricky to do right. Especially when it comes down to changing keyboard shortcuts and UI layouts depending on what set of plugins/features are loaded.