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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: kcontrol reorganization (was: UI enhancements)
From:       Uno Engborg <uno () webworks ! se>
Date:       2003-01-26 13:56:16
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On Sunday 26 January 2003 11.26, Daniele Pighin wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> kde has a strength, which is its being higly modular and customizable; a
> strength that can, on the other hand, be an issue for all those users who
> are not used to so many options to tweak around.
>
> We have therefore to find a solution to allow both average users to have
> fewer options and advanced users to exploit all the features of this
> system. We also want average users to be eventually able to access more
> sofisticated controls, when they need or want to.
>
> Moreover, there is a major issue: kde is no longer a mere desktop manager,
> it is rather becoming a system shell, a whole, complex layer of software
> that release after release covers more and more aspects of the system's
> management. Hence, the need for a solution that let us put more and more
> configuration options in (as always more will be needed, as modules and
> pieces of software are integrated into kde) without warrying the user who
> doesn't need this options.
>
> This of mine is a proposal I would love you to discuss, especially to know
> how far is this from being realizable, or also useful.
>
> When you fire up kcontrol you have a left-pane which is a tabbed view:
> actually it holds "index", "search", "guide".
> Now what I suggest is to make the "index" tab a tabbed view itself, holding
> a number of tabs representing different levels of abstraction for
> configuration options.
>
> Im'm going to explain this with a couple of examples.
> Suppose we want to provide 3 levels (the choose of the number and the name
> of the levels would be a matter of study for the usability guys), and call
> them "basic", "advanced", "power user": we would have something like this:



The problem is how to know what usergroup you belong to?

I think our problem is that we don't know who we are.  In some cases we desing 
for complete newbies, and in other cases for the advanced user. This leaves  
both  groups unhappy. 

And I would guess that we are a little too newbie friendly sometimes in that 
we design for users that we would like to have (newbies) but in reality do 
not have  We have to remember that this is for Unix and most Unix systems 
have sysadmins and most of them are not newbies while their user might be
.

What I would like to see is instead a kconfig config tool, where a sysadmin 
could create kconfigs at suitable complexity level to fit his users.  The 
kconfig  config  tool should  also allow  the sysadmin to prevent users from 
configuring certain things.

The default root kconfig could then look something like what it looks today
and have a menu for starting the kconfig tool so that he could add or remove
features to be configurable  for certain user groups. And the default non root
kconfig could be somewhat simpler than it is today.


We could also provide template kconfigs that the sysadmin could use as 
starting point for user configurations. Here we could have templates for
newbies, andvanced, and very advanced uers.


By doing it this way we would get a scalable system where we 
could add in more advanced settings without risk of making the system hard to 
use for newbies. It would also be easier to remove settings from the default 
user kconfig template without a storm of protests from users that absolutely
need this or that feature.  


The problem with this approach is that KDE systems might look different to
non root users depending on what settings the sysadmin decides to be allowed 
and this could lead to higher training costs. But on the other hand MS 
windows already have this kind of configurability and I don't think I have 
heard anybody complain about it so perhaps it is not such a big problem after 
all.


I cc this to kde-devel to have their view on if it would be possible or hard 
to develop something like this. Sorry for the inconvenience if you are on 
both lists.


Regards
Uno Engborg

 
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