Comment by paleite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paleite | Hacker News Reader

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I mean the following as feedback to help you find more users, not as critique; I understand where you’re coming from and this is just how I would personally approach it:

What I immediately noticed looking at the README, is that the communication is centered around you and your values, rather than on the end-user:

You mention why you created it, not what it enables the user to do. You use Linux-lingo, like “free (speech and beer)” which many users are unfamiliar with and don’t know why they should care. Your installation instructions make it hard for users to pick which one they should choose. There are no Mac binaries, but Macs are wide-spread among developers. Windows binaries mention “x64”, which is very technical and might scare users away.

The Ubuntu screenshots make it look like “Linux only”. You could replace it with a Windows or Mac screenshot, to get people to understand it works on their platform.

You could still keep this technical (and potentially alienating) language in your documentation, but simplifying the README to make it easier for the 90% of your potential audience could make it more popular.

You mentioned in this thread that some people don’t want Electron. That’s true, and it’s a great USP for those that require it, but personally I would avoid assuming that it’s the USP that convinces the masses.

Thanks for the feedback! I can certainly try to improve the structure of the README, though I'm not sure if I agree with some of your points about giving more priority to non-Linux users. The thing is, at least in my eyes, Gtk generally feels terrible on platforms where it is not native (I would in fact even avoid using it in a Qt-based Linux desktop setup, just as I avoid Qt-based applications as far as possible in my Gtk-based one), and at any rate the ports are often lacking even in features (for instance, last I checked, Windows Gtk would not allow me to read tablet pressure information). If you are using Windows, and don't care for "free (speech and beer)", why would you even want to use anything other than OneNote? I'm somewhat wary of repeating the mistakes of Firefox (and GNOME) of snubbing a likely target demographic to court an unlikely one.

(Regarding Mac, I unfortunately don't have a Mac and neither does anyone who I know well enough to ask to borrow theirs, though someone did in fact contribute homebrew-based build scripts that supposedly work at some point. I just have no idea how to package the result to make it easy to install.)

You say:

- You don't want to give more priority to non-Linux users

- GTK feels terrible on those other platforms

- You don't believe those who care about licensing issues would use it

- You cannot build releases or installers for Mac

The first thing that comes to mind on reading your response is that the non-Linux users are a market you are not really interested in - and even if they were they are not a market you can effectively serve (installers, updates, issues).

You should consider formally abandoning official support for non-Linux, as in reality you don't currently have actual support for them anyway. Be honest, cut your losses, and choose your customers. Cross-platform is not a benefit if it is unsustainable.

Well, it's not exactly unsustainable - the Github CI continues producing those builds without me having to do anything for it (it in fact didn't break even once in the past year, compared to several breakages on the "backwards-compatible" Ubuntu 18.04 deb which happened whenever Github changed something about the package bundle available to that image). If someone reports a bug on Windows, I will look into it, and/or spend some time walking them through a workaround (since I do in fact have access to Windows setups). As I see it, in the most natural sense of support, I do have support for Windows, even though it is what I guess you would call Tier 2 support.

To nitpick a little, I also didn't say I don't think that those who care about licensing issues would use [the Windows build]; rather, I think that those who don't care about licensing issues and are on Windows would not use it, because there is a Windows-only product that is closed-source which I am unlikely to be able to compete with on that ground.

I'm not really advertising Mac support beyond having some files merged from people who did get it to work (https://github.com/blackhole89/notekit/blob/master/screensho...).

Reasonable response. I think as a passing potential user I'd stand by my original comment, but I can see your point.

> The Ubuntu screenshots make it look like “Linux only”. You could replace it with a Windows or Mac screenshot, to get people to understand it works on their platform.

Replace? I'm not Linux user but this sounds strange to me. He did native GTK app and he should not be considering Linux users?

Regarding screenshots, just crop the window borders. That way no one platform feels like "the main one".

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