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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: RFC: System Settings categorisation overhaul
From:       Jacopo De Simoi <wilderkde () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-10-03 22:07:59
Message-ID: 200910040007.59611.wilderkde () gmail ! com
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> One thing that also needs to be done (and "going through all systemsettings' \
> .desktop  files sounds like a terrific opportunity) is adding keywords so they're \
> easier to  find from other places (like KRunner). It might also mean removing \
> keyword from  lower-level items to not pollute the matches too much.

Sorry for the long posting, but this ^^^^  is imho what the most important part of \
this work would be. Categorizing modules is something quite intrinsically very \
personal, and sometimes we, as devs, need to make choices which are completely \
arbitrary. Sometimes there are the "developer point of view" and the "user point of \
view" which are in clear contrast, sometimes they are not; sometimes it is just a \
matter of growing accustomed to someone else's categorization, which, when changed, \
leads to frustration and angry comments like "wtf did you do to kcontrol?". 

----Long story:
Categorization (or a tree [0] if you like) does not provide a good way for organizing \
the huge quantity of settings that we give the users access to. In contrast, a graph \
([1])  seems to me more useful to expose the concept. Of course the big deal with \
trees is the ease of navigation; almost everybody is used to deal with trees, \
starting from their very own Document folder. On the other hand, how are you supposed \
to navigate a graph? Two guys answered this question 11 years ago coming up with \
Google; KDE is today making use of Nepomuk, which as far as I understand, aims to \
create connections between pieces of data of different nature scattered around the \
computer and even outside and be able to expose them in a natural way (which is \
currently _the_ big problem with it for a lot of people afaiu).  

What do we do when we don't find the option we want in systemsettings? we fire up a \
browser, write "keyboard layout setting kde4" on google, find hopefully the right \
page in a few tries, go back to systemsettings, follow the right sequence of \
categories and.. we get it.  Why shouldn't we take a shortcut?

----Short story:  
We should put _much_ more emphasis on the search box; put it in the middle of a white \
page with a colored writing on top (ouch it has been patented! [2]) and the user will \
not miss it. Just type "keyboard layout", hit enter, the top result would be the \
right one, and done.  Following category trees is very 1995, searching is just 2010. \
People now are a lot more inclined to "google around" than to parse information given \
by hopefully meaningful names, which then in practice might be far less meaningful \
than intended simply because of translation issues. 

----Before you flame me:
Now, obviously this is not going to work, as maybe the biggest problem is that we \
cannot have a keyword for every single word that every single user will ever use as a \
query. On the other hand think about the benefits: the user wants to change something \
in particular (e.g. "Desktop Effects", or "splash screen", "automounting"), which is \
usually something very concrete and much easier to fully and uniquely translate than \
"Workspace" "login settings" "external devices".  By making the KCM modules \
themselves with their keywords exposed to the user via a search facility, we can \
completely forget about a hierarchical structure and think of categories as "tags", \
rather than folders.

In practice what I suggest is the following: 
1) Put the search box somewhere obvious, above the categories, but /inside/ the white \
frame, to make clear it's part of the game and not some external "I'm never gonna use \
it" accessory. Give keyboard focus to it, invite the user to try it out. 2) Consider \
categories as tags, not as folders, make ss look as a web browser rather than a file \
manager, so that we can have one kcm "linked" by more than one category (keyboard \
layout accessible by "locale setting" and "keyboard and mouse", for instance)

Sorry again for the length of this post, but I do believe that we could change this \
in a way that we won't need to change again in a few months time and which is \
non-disruptive to the user. 

  --J

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(graph_theory)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(mathematics)
[2] http://valleywag.gawker.com/5350982/google-patents-worlds-simplest-home-page


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