Here's a good article which helps explain the mentality and effect of progress indicators on the user experience (loading screens fall under this category) - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/
An option to turn it off in preferences would be fine with me, but it auto-disappears when the GUI loads... So I'm not getting why folks think it would be a burden? It's not like it would add any notable time to the startup. Maybe a fraction of a second? Part of good UX is to let the user know what's happening if there is a wait involved. The faster you show the user something, the faster the program feels. This isn't just some tradition, and it's certainly not just a Windows thing. :)
My 2p.
-COn 1 Dec 2016 9:34 pm, "Bryce Harrington" <bryce@...961...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 07:53:48PM +0100, Tobias Ellinghaus wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, 1. Dezember 2016, 13:36:13 CET schrieb Martin Owens:
> > > On Thu, 2016-12-01 at 14:23 +0000, C R wrote:
> > > > Will this graphic be featured on the loading screen as well (when
> > > > it's implemented)?
> > >
> > > Yes.
> > >
> > > The about screen graphic will also be featured on the inkscape.org home
> > > page and on some merchandise in the shop. The shop stuff will have to
> > > be tested to get it right.
> >
> > How long does Inkscape take to start for you? Here it's coming up basically
> > instantaneous. So I wonder if a loading screen is really needed, or if the
> > work to add that should maybe be spent in fixing slowness in startup instead,
> > like caching icons, querying fonts in a separate thread, ...
>
> Inkscape also starts up acceptably fast for me on my system, and
> I would not like to see it burdened with a startup screen. But I know
> it is considered traditional and fairly common on Windows. I am -1 to
> adding it in general (I'd rather see attention going into speeding up
> the load), but would be open to a compromise of having a build option to
> enable/disable it, and leave it to packagers to decide whether to have
> it or not for the platform in particular.
>
> Bryce
>
>
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