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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Fork of KDE4/Qt3?
From:       "Mark A. Taff" <marktaff () comcast ! net>
Date:       2008-06-09 22:33:08
Message-ID: 200806091533.08568.marktaff () comcast ! net
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On Monday 09 June 2008 11:10:58 Michael Hoffer wrote:
> The whole discussion is really boring! It's like the discussions about
> the effectiveness of graphical user interfaces in the 80ies. I thinkt
> that plasma developers will be very thankfull if people make real
> suggestions instead of just complaining without trying to understand
> the consequences of the new idea.

Here's a real suggestion: give us back our Desktops!

The consequences of current plasma are that the masses for whom the exisiting 
Desktop metaphor is highly effective are being told by the deeds of the 
Plasma developers to take long walk off a short pier.

We are approaching the second major release of KDE 4, and the devs *still* 
haven't managed to produce KDE 4 versions of core desktop features, like an 
actual desktop.  Experimental interfaces are fine and dandy, but the existing 
working desktop should have been ported/developed first.

> The KDE/Plasma developers are not the first ones who realize the use
> of the classical Desktop folder is problematic.

The Plasma devs need to realize that the Plasma desktop is problematic!

> Apple has a more 
> conservative solution. They introduced stacks. The problem is that
> people will still use the old way of placing dozens of files and
> folders on the desktop and will use stacks just as a cool aditional
> feature. Also stacks are not really flexible. From this aspect the KDE
> approach is much better from my point of view.
>
> Of course, the plasma desktop is not finished yet and is missing lots
> of features. But give it some time and you will see that it will be
> great!
>
> Making the old way the default is like delivering a computer with a
> mouse and cool GUI OS but disabling it and use text UI as default,
> just because people are more used to it. No, that is definitely not
> the way!

If I recall correctly, when Win 3.1 came out, booting into DOS *was* the 
default, unless you edited autoexec.bat to load Windows.  And yes, I do still 
have Win 3.1 on floppy. ;-)  The right way is to deliver an environment that 
people can use "out of the box".

KDE used to be all about letting you work the way you wanted.  Now we have 
interface tyrants that want to force users to work the way *they* think is 
the Right Way(tm).  I've got news for you--I don't give a hoot how *you* 
think I should work.  I want the freedom to work in a manner that is 
effective for *me*.

> Something about FolderView:
>
> The problem with the classical desktop is that most people loose the
> orientation on their desktop after some time because they use it as a
> temp folder. Then at some point they can't remeber: "Did I copy the
> file to its destination already?" or "Which file is the right one, the
> one on the desktop or the one in the document folder?". And it is
> actually not a matter of being a professional user or not, but rather
> a matter of tidiness. It is like in real life: many people know that
> problem of a completely messed up desktop. Lots of books, papers and
> coffe cups.

It's none of your business if my desktop appears tidy to you or not!  Are you 
going to try to force me to roll my underwear in 6" wide rolls like in Basic 
Training (that's the U.S. Army initial entry training, for those outside the 
U.S.) too?

My desktop gets messy from time to time, and I've never gotten confused about 
where my files live.

None of us on the pro-desktop side are arguing against users having the 
freedom to experiment and use these new interfaces.  If these new interfaces 
work well for them, that is awesome!  All we are saying is that there is no 
reason to suggest by action or inaction that we take a flying leap.

For my money, not having a working Desktop should have been a show-stopper bug 
for KDE 4.0, let alone for KDE 4.1

> FolderView is meant as an assistant. Thinking of the real desktop:
> putting a new book on the desktop does not result in one more book
> that has to be brought back to the library. FolderView is directly
> connected to the library and will do that for you automatically. It is
> like your personal assitant that keeps your desktop clean!

I want a *copy* of the file, in many cases, on the freaking desktop!  If I 
wanted a link to the file, I'd make one!  I don't seem to have any difficulty 
copying a newer version over the older one when I decide that is what I want.  

Keeping with your analogy, the only reason you *have* to return a book to the 
library is beacuse of copyright law and the difficulty of reproduction 
*requires* you to return the original.  I however, am free to make as many 
copies of my personal files as I want, subject to limits of my hard drive.

Folderview isn't your personal assistant that keeps your desktop clean -- it 
is a highly restrictive user interface that forces you to adhere to someone 
else's idea of how you should behave.  It forces me to keep my desktop clean, 
(effectively eliminating the desktop)  even though there is *no* benefit in 
that.  It makes me *less* efficient.

> If you tried to avoid that on the classical KDE 3.x desktop you most
> likely used soft links to some folders. At least I did that with
> almost everything. One link to the "Pictures" folder one to "Music"
> etc. That is exactly what FolderView does.

Don't get me wrong: I do like the idea of the folderview plasmoid, just not as 
anything closely approaching a replacement for a real desktop.  It is a 
useful widget, like Liquid Weather and my cpu/memory/disk/net monitors, but 
it is no substitute for a real desktop.


Regards,

Mark
 
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