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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: The Ctrl-A controversy
From:       Torsten Rahn <supas121 () astrophysik ! uni-kiel ! de>
Date:       1999-12-17 10:27:48
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On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Magnus Ihse wrote:

> And here are my opinons on the Ctrl-A controversy that's been
> discussed here lately... This too is a rather lengthy message.

 
>  * Familiarity 
> 
> Familiarity is another key point in good usability design. (This is
> sometimes, a bit unfortunately, referred to as intuitive.) That the
> users are aware of the importance of familiarity is clearly shown by
> the heated argument about Ctrl-A, which in my analysis is basically
> an argument about your background and what you find familiar. :-)
 
> My guess, although I can't prove it, is that the absolute majority of
> KDE users are most familiar with the Windows user interface, and that
> only a small minority is more familiar with traditional unix
> interface. That'd make the correct choice (if it's not possible to
> implement a global choice, which I believe is the preferred option)

O.k. the way some people on this list seem to think is the 
following way:

Imagine France would want to attract people from the USA
to come to France (to enjoy holidays there or to make them 
stay there for a lifetime). To do this they create a mailinglist
france-look@kde.org and discuss how to prepare france for the 
new visitors.
'Well american people won't come here if they don't feel familiar' some
people agree. A good point. 'But I don't want to change my
habits just for these people' says another one who seems to have 
some concerns.' - 'Don't worry! You don't have to! ' was the answer.
'We live still in a free land so you are free to do everything 
your way just like you did before at home. --- BUT: people
in the US usually measure speed in mph instead of km/h so we should
really change that in france' -- 'Hmm? Why should we?' -- 'Well
there live much more people in the US so they are the big majority.
Most of these people will only come of course if they feel 
familiar here!' -- 'Hmm shouldn't we change our default-language
to american-english then?' -- 'Mais bien sure ... Ooops I meant:
Of course we should...' -- 'Mais je ne veux pas parler anglais!'
-- 'Well of course at home you can still speak francais. But 
the official language will be american english. Most people
here can already speak english and they do so if they deal
with stuff like computers -- so it won't be such a big problem
for us. But if we stay with french american people will have
problems and they won't come here if we speak french!!!  -- 
Ah and we should change our flag to stars & stripes. -- Our flag is 
*already* blue, white and red anyways so you won't notice the difference
anyways. And as I keep saying: You can still use our old flag
for your own purposes. The official flag of france will be 
stars and stripes ...'. A year later some american tourists
got slightly irritated when they discovered that the 'Tour Eiffel'
had been replaced by a nice shiny copy of the 'World Trade Center',
and they wondered where they would get some baguettes and wine
instead of the bread and Coke they were used to. It was really
hard to find something like this because France had turned to 
be a perfect copy of the United States! They even renamed 'Paris'
to 'Washington' to make american people feel more familiar.
Some people who came from the U.S. really enjoyed this -- but
others were quite disappointed: 'Why did you change everything to 
the american way of life here? I really liked the small differences
here. They were even part of the reason why I used to come to France!
Now I could stay in America as well hardly discovering a difference.'
That also seemed to be the reason why the expected 'big move' 
from the US to France didn't happen....

Well I'm quite happy that this little story was complete 
nonsense and won't happen for sure. Because I like to be 
in France in my holidays and I don't travel there to eat
'Eisbein und Sauerkraut' or something ...

If I would want everything to be like Windows then I would have 
joined the Wine project and helped to create WDE. And our 
website also says: 'Is Unix ready for the desktop?' and not:
'Is Unix ready for Windows?'

> Next week I'll talk more about how Apple has gotten almost all the
> advantages of the MDI interface while still sticking to a SDI
> interface. :) (Readers of this list that is familiar with the Mac can

hey hey I expect to hear a jingle when I hear sentences like this 
one. Where is this jingle -- I'm really used to it from TV ...
Oh this sux if you can't present at least a little melody now ;^)

CU,
Torsten

> start thinking about that already now, and how that might be
> implemented in KDE...)
> 
> /Magnus
> 
> 

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