Re: [Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On February 20, 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
> > The problem I see is that users are just not acting like we expect.
>
> I definitely agree.

x2 ... 

> And I think you hit one of the basic issues in:
> > A desktop lies the base ground for every possible activity of a user -
> > so it can not act like an application like Inkscape or Jokosher that
> > focus on a specific user group.
>
> Exactly.

it extends even beyond variance in individual users and to completely 
different usage environments. 

one example is the the media center bruhaha: it is slowly coming into being 
via that long-promised convergence of consumer electronics and full blown 
computers (with the line between the two increasingly fuzzing). the use case 
for a media centric use case is going to be vastly different than that for an 
person in an office doing documents and email. in a perfect world the same 
desktop environment can mold to both use cases, not only to make the most out 
of our development efforts, but also to ease interoperability and support 
costs.

the fact that right now we have mythtv that is completely different from our 
desktops because, quite simply, our desktops are not capable of becoming 
a "mythtv" is really bad form.

it also will help to future proof us after a fashion.

> They use gnome because I don't actually _use_ their machines, but I
> maintain them, and since I was running on ppc64 and wanted a common
> distro for all my machines, the simplest choice was Fedora Core. Which
> doesn't even install KDE by default, I think (but even if it does: the
> default WM environment is gnome, so if you just show your kids how to use
> it, that's what they have).

fedora 7 will have a kde spin so you can choose to give them that if you wish 
=) fedora is becoming more kde friendly, which i think is good for everyone.

(give us more opportunity to work together, which already happened last month 
in boston; keep us working to reach each other's bar and go even further; 
give fedora users more choice and a better experience if their preference is 
kde; etc)

> I would _heartily_ agree with that. To get back to my daughters - the one
> who messed up her desktop is perfectly able to make her wall-papers be
> some disgustingly cute thing that has a hot-pink-on-pink theme or
> whatever, but she is also perfectly able to mess up the menu bar. I think
> she has about ten copies of the Gnome "xeyes" applet, and she ended up
> with TWO gnome menu entries.

heh. my boy uses kde and the only thing he ever feels like doing to his panels 
is to drag the games menu from the app menu to the panel to make it easier to 
get at .. =) he likes things uncluttered.

> And yes, it doesn't have to be a "expert options" thing. Maybe it's a
> hardcoded setup that you actually have to choose in the GDM login panel:

user levels have been proven over and over not to work. microsoft recently 
re-learnt that with office 2007, actually .. they tried it in a beta, and it 
bombed so badly they pulled it. so, for the Nth time the experiment was tried 
in earnest and didn't pan out.

> In fact, the *best* option is to probably make the "non-expert" mode not
> just hide the configuration tool entries, but actually *not*even*honor*
> them. Why? Because then, if you screw up, you just log in to the "basic
> window manager", and the expert config entries you screwed up while you
> tested "expert mode" simply don't take effect.

we're frightfully close to this in kde, we just need to make it even more 
obvious how to set up user profiles and provide some sane defaults profiles 
that prevent honouring of various sets of "expert" options.

a lot of fiddly "accountant" type work all the same.

that said, care would need to be taken not to repeat the user level mistake in 
implementing this. to be honest, i'm not particularly sure how one would.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)

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