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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE rough edges - file-types in KDE 3
From:       "Robert Knight" <robertknight () gmail ! com>
Date:       2007-09-19 8:10:08
Message-ID: 13ed09c00709190110h21ad3af7h3ebb43dfd11d1ecd () mail ! gmail ! com
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>  I'm hoping KDE 4.0 will be a lot easier to use ...

Time for some expectations management.  Some parts of KDE 4.0 (most
notably, the file manager) are a big improvement on their KDE 3
counterparts.  Other parts of KDE 4.0 will be largely unchanged in
terms of their interface, because we haven't had time to re-do them
yet.  This includes the file type association options you mentioned.

> 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...

Some options are much more important that others however.  If a dialog
has too many buttons, boxes, spinners, diaogs, lists and who knows
what else, it becomes harder to find and change the most important
ones.  In other words, if you throw too much stuff into a dialog or
window the 'value' or 'usefulness' of it goes down.

The question then is not just about 'more options' or 'less options',
its about users from the target audience being able to set the
application up the way they want it with the minimum of effort.

Quite a few KDE settings dialogs could be hugely improved without
taking any functionality out at all.

> it is really the task of the distribution to provide sensible defaults

I disagree.  The distributions have a quite enough other things to
worry about without having to spent months finding and adjusting every
inappropriate default, only for every other distribution to repeat the
effort.  There is also the problem that distribution maintainers are
not necessarily knowledgeable in the domain of the application, nor do
they know about all the user feedback the developer has received.





On 19/09/2007, Arnold Krille <kde@arnoldarts.de> wrote:
> 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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