[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Usability and open source
From:       Richard Moore <rich () ipso-facto ! freeserve ! co ! uk>
Date:       2000-01-30 22:39:18
[Download RAW message or body]



Waldo Bastian wrote:

> 
> In addition, a better solution would be to have active usability
> research within KDE. I think the kde-look list can play an important
> role in this as well as KDE's commercial partners.

I have been doing a little work in this area. I am writing a class
KMouseHole that tries to improve Fitt's performace of widgets. It
isn't ready just yet but I'll release the first hack this week. I
thought of the idea a while back, but did nothing about it until
I was reminded of it by the Tog article on the new MacOS.

The idea is to make a widget 'virtually' larger than it really is
by moderating the relationship between mouse movement and pointer
movement using QCursor::setPos(). It is similar to a snap-to type
systsem, but less proscriptive. This should help particularly for
things like toolbars, kwin window controls and other dense groups
of clickable widgets.

On a more general note though, I think we should perhaps be trying
to recruit academic institutions for this. I know from my experience
at the University of Manchester, that if we could define some small
projects in research areas like this and were willing to put in
the work to support the efforts and evaluate the results then we
could propose these projects for students. We could also push the
benefits of Open Source to research projects on a larger scale such
as the BodyTalk research for KPresenter that Carsten mentioned (and
Dirk Foersterling posted a link to yesterday). We must already have
some information on the subject for the legal submissions to get
charitable tax status for KDE e.V.

> 
> In this respect I am disappointed that Corel, while boosting about its
> knowledge about UI, does do very little to share its knowledge with the
> rest of KDE.

Yes, I had hoped for more from them in this area too.

Cheers

Rich.

> 
> Cheers,
> Waldo

-- 
     Richard Moore		rich@ipso-facto.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.robocast.com/	richard@robocast.com
http://developer.kde.org/	rich@kde.org

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]