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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE rough edges - file-types in KDE 3
From:       Arnold Krille <kde () arnoldarts ! de>
Date:       2007-09-19 6:58:33
Message-ID: 200709190858.38469.kde () arnoldarts ! de
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One of the conclusions of that "Walt Mossberg"-thread seems to be that most of 
the issues are packaging issues. Here is one example:

Am Mittwoch, 19. September 2007 schrieb Ian Wadham:
> Being able click on a file or file-name link and have it opened
> by a reasonable choice of application is a rather basic desktop
> feature that has been around since the Xerox Star (1980) and
> before.  It is to me an important aspect of user-friendliness.
<snip>
> Her screen was splattered with tiny windows, scattered in amongst
> the usual KMail panes.  "That's not my mother!" she cried.  I vaguely
> recognised a small furry animal ...  "It's that bloody Gimp," I fumed,
> "What's it doing there?".  "I don't know," she said, "All I did was click
> on Peter's attachment.  And what's a Gimp, anyway?".  Useless to
> explain that AFAIK it's a disabled American soldier, with no
> relationship to graphics software or family photos.

You might notice that gimp is _not_ a KDE program. So KDE is not responsible 
for this app to be the default on jpeg- and whatsoever-images. Its the 
distributions choice to make gimp the default if it is installed.

And if you don't like the gimp (I find it very easy to use without buying a 
book, but I was using Corel), why did you install (or not uninstall) it?

> My next problem was to find out how to change it - to Gwenview,
> for example.  I searched for about half an hour through KMail
> and Control Center settings to try and find anything that related
> to recognising file-types - but in vain.  This is about as much fun
> (for me) as turning over rocks looking for snails in my garden.

Why didn't you do the obvious thing? Search (as in use the searchbar) for file 
and select the upcoming elements (which should be less then ten by then) till 
you find the right one? Here looking for "datei" gives me a list of eight 
words which link to mainly two modules. And one of them is the one you 
searched for.

> There are just so MANY options, most of which I will never use or
> understand.

Yeah, that is what gnome is always thinking about. Making it easy with very 
little options. Actually people choose KDE over Gnome because they can 
customize it more and can change more settings...

> Even the words they use are hard for me to understand - 
> and I am English, born and bred, and have 40 years experience in
> this industry.  So how are non-English users supposed to cope?

Non-English speakers use their translation and at least here in German the 
translation contains nearly zero English words...

> Finally I thought of right-clicking on the attachment link in the email
> and there it was - an Open With... option - and in the dialog box a
> "Remember application association for this type of file" option.  So
> I selected Gwenview, called my wife back in and away she went.

Amazing, isn't it? Two ways to do the same thing: Either select the 
applications for each filetype in the properties of a file or do this at one 
place in the control center.

> Then my wife wanted to know if I could copy the photos onto a CD
> she could take to Ted's camera shop and get prints ... Hmmmm ...
> Well I did it (k3b), though I was not sure which application to use
> and, just to be sure, I replayed the disk in Windows, but she still
> has not been to the camera shop for the acid test ...

Don't be so shy. k3b is actually a stable version. You can burn CDs with it 
and it works. "works" in the sense of "I did burn it and can read it in the 
same drive. But also in other drives on other machines and even with other 
OSes without any trouble."

> I am sorry this post has been so lengthy, but I hope you have had
> a few laughs and I really wanted to get across some flavour of
> what KDE can be like for a first-time user.  And that *is* a matter for
> developers to consider IMHO.  I'm hoping KDE 4.0 will be a lot
> easier to use ...

No, KDE has some tools to make the first introduction for first-timers easy 
(kpersonalizer) but as most distribution don't use that, it is really the 
task of the distribution to provide sensible defaults. And its also the task 
of the distributions to select the right apps to install and to connect the 
filetypes with.

Arnold
-- 
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/

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