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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Self scaling enviroment -was: Worth reading...
From:       Boris Povazay <boris () jouh ! at>
Date:       1999-07-16 10:00:00
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Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> 
> Derek [fountai@hursley.ibm.com] wrote:
> > http://www.osOpinion.com/Opinions/ToddBurgess/ToddBurgess1.html
> 
> I went to the "Linux for Programmers" section first and was immediately
> turned off.
> 
> "Systems designed by individuals wearing Dilbert t-shirts and jeans for
> others in Dilbert t-shirts and jeans is always a bad idea. This particular
> market is small and does not represent the computing population as a whole."
> 
> This particular market may be small, but it was hackers making the system
> *they* wanted for *themselves* that made Linux what it is.  Linux was not
> somehow fated to be incredibly stable and robust and configurable no matter
> what the developers did -- it is this way because of how they built it.  If
> the above statement is true, Linux is a bad idea and never would have
> gotten the attention it has gotten that are making people say it needs to
> now change to "get it right".
He says: "individuals ... FOR ... others [like that] ... is a bad idea"
This means, they are likely to forget about the average user. You īre
perfectly right when it comes to development, but I cannot see why a
programmer should not benefit of a good enviroment.(The author writes
about Dilbert-guys, who just manage to create an enviroment - and KDE is
certainly more than that)
Now You can say the needs of a programmer are different to that of a
newbie. This is true either. So why don īt create a self-scaling
enviroment?
This could be achieved by a help feature at first, that allows levels of
"user-knowledge" (explaining every button to "how do I get the damned
XYZ-function doing UVW?") and at the end a scalable user interface. The
later would hide things like: themes, certain functions and
subfunctions. This would keep the user in a "save box", which then would
be expandable at her/his own will.
Every step the user would take to increase her/his power would lower
safety and enhance complexity.

I guess this is the way to go!

ciao BoP
---
http://www.jouh.at - bp@jouh.at
DI Boris Povazay

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