Marc Paré a écrit :
Le 2010-10-31 10:51, Dale Huckeby a écrit :
While we agree that "Young Family" doesn't work, it seems to me some
of the
other categories are similarly broad. A useful rule of thumb would be to
focus not on types of persons or groups but on activities. Since "young
family" is not an activity, whereas "web development" is, that gives
us an
objective reason for preferring the latter over the former as a useful
category. Likewise for "academia". Not all academics have the same
needs,
for instance adminstrators versus research professors versus adjuncts
who
teach and don't do research, yet all would fall under the term
"academic".
In addition, a given college professor is not going to use his or her
computer only AS a professor, and his or her other activities, playing
poker online, playing games offline, buying and selling stocks and
bonds,
etc. would vary widely from person to person.
That's why I would focus more narrowly on what a person wants to DO with
his computer, in terms of *specific* tasks or activities. Early in the
process I would ask him what sorts of things he wants to use his
computer
for and then list all the things he CAN do with it, each of which can be
selected or ignored. It MIGHT be useful to note, without it necessarily
being a selectable category, some of the things (and the apps that would
go with them) a typical high school teacher or rabid sports fan or
writer or stock market player might want to do or, alternatively, we
could indicate, along with the description of the uses of a particular
app or closely linked set of apps, what kinds of people might find
such app(s) useful, and why. All of this is a way of saying, which I
think we're in general agreement on, that we should be careful not
to cast too broad a net with our categories, that each should embody
a *particular* activity or *closely* linked set of activities.
Nor too narrow
Dale Huckeby
Here we agree again. There would be nothing to stop that section, for
example, "Academia" to open up to subsets of "Academia-Reasearch";
"Academia-Administrator (office)"; "Academia-Teaching" etc.
Good point
And yes, if they play poker online, they would then have checked the
"Gaming" category.
Which could have "cards" among other sub-categories ...
The choosing of these categories are what the person wants to DO with
her/his computer. What you are suggesting is to ask her/him what they
would want to do and they would answer by categories. So why add such
a layer when we could already dispense with this layer and go straight
to the categories?
Right - the more streamlined the better. As long the user has the choices.
There are only a certain amount of programmes available and therefore
the same for categories. We can offer the categories. If some of the
categories are broad, then, when picked, we could have for example, a
drop down extended menu from that categories with a sub-set of more
descriptive categories.
I like the idea of a line that expands, like in Rpmdrake categories, or
the (Gnome) Nautilus file browser.
And, remember, that software packages will bridge the categories where
they fit in more than one.
We are saying the same thing but with different approaches.
Marc
It seems we're approaching a consensus.
I'm also beginning to see a convergence here ... with the XDG menu
system used by Mandriva.
We probably want to keep the installation choices somewhat simpler.
So I see the installation, after the language selection (of one or more
languages), continuing with the choice of the desktop environment.
I would have KDE / Gnome / Other (which expands to show the others
available) / or none (for console only)
With an "information" button to give the implications, including the
fallback light desktops for KDE and Gnome.
After that, a dialog for the activity categories, which would have
default application selections corresponding to the desktop environment
chosen.
We could preselect certain categories to make it easier for users who
don't want to bother choosing.
We list the categories, each of which is expandable to show any
sub-categories, and further to show the individual applications, for
more detailed selection/deselection.
Particularly useful for more advanced users.
The advantage of this is we can have something suitable for all types of
users, without requiring configuration or non-intuitive choices.
Those who want quick easy choices, and those - like myself - who want to
fine-tune which packages are installed in one pass.
Required packages such as libraries should probably remain hidden,
although they would be visible as now in Rpmdrake after the installation.
- André
