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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: The Ctrl-A controversy
From:       Gino <gino () kde ! nl>
Date:       1999-12-17 10:59:31
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At least, Magnus tries to give some constructive feedback/thoughts....
I just don't like the way you respond to what other people have to say
(especially the jingle remark).  What does this add to the discussion?
The only thing you have to say has been said already a hundred times,
you just weave a not even nice story around it...


Torsten Rahn wrote:

> 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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