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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: A radical idea
From:       Seth Nickell <snickell () stanford ! edu>
Date:       2001-11-13 21:47:01
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On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 09:54, Jim Conner wrote:
> This can be done using soft-links and having a browser only show those 
> soft-linked directories and files.  Granted this may be a good thing for some 
> new user to have, but current linux users would find it annoying.  

Hiding the reality of the system behind a masquerade is usually a
mistake. There are useful abstractions to make, such as "files" and
"folders" that hide complexity, but the idea of soft-links is one that
is bound to break now and again - leaving users very confused when it
does. This sort of hackery has caused numerous problems in the Windows
family of operating systems. We had considered doing something like this
in Nautilus, but in the end all the potential problems (just start to
start off the list, showing a different filesystem than non-GNOME
applications such as KOffice or OpenOffice) heavily outweighed the
advantages. Inconsistent systems are worse than archane systems.

> I just 
> wish that all distros would adhere to the LSB standard that tells them what 
> to put where in the existing directories.  Making changes like this would go 
> beyond the scope of KDE and would probably be a new distro.  There might be 

No, it would be a new operating system. KDE & GNOME will only be able to
attain a certain level of usability without starting to make demands and
changes to the underlying architecture. It is misguided to believe that
you can form a usable system on top of any given architecture without
either changing that architecture or radically hiding it. Once you've
started doing the level of "hiding" that I think is going to eventually
be necessary (or else we should accept that neither KDE nor GNOME will
be competitive with commercial environments), you might as well ditch
the underlying architecture altogether if its not willing to change.

I would love to see a project create a KDE system or a GNOME system that
completely disregards the broken conventions inheirited by being a
"Linux system". Some deference *should* be paid to conventions like
this, but they should not be set in granite, and where possible we
should be pressing to improve them to the benefit of desktop users. We
need communication about kernel developers and system assemblers (such
as distributions) about the needs of the desktop...we can't just be a
thin graphical shell, both KDE & GNOME need to see themselves as the
primary environment for a certain contingent of their userbase, and
start asking for the changes we need to support this growing population.

> I can't remember what off 
> the top of my head.  One thing new users have to realize is that linux is a 
> different way of thinking and doing stuff than other OSes, whether it be 
> windows or mac.  Once they get past that hurdle, they will be much happier 
> and with a good desktop such as KDE, that hurdle is easier to make.

If users have to conform themselves to "thinking like it" before they
can start using it without problems, its a pretty damn broken way of
viewing things. Having sensible English directory names...well makes
sense. Its sad that programmer's laziness about typing out names
(probably starts with variable and function names) has led to a
pointlessly confusing directory structure. 

Ironically this practice produces hard to read code too. Actually, in
the Nautilus codebase you aren't allowed to use prgr_trunc_var_names (or
PrgrTruncVarNames, as your religion may or may not hold), because it
reduces the readability of the code substantially. Yes, you had to hit
that many more keystrokes, oh no ;-)

-Seth

  ------------------------------------------------------------- 
 | GNOME Usability Project lead  -  http://usability.gnome.org |
 | Nautilus hacker               -  http://nautilus.eazel.com  |
  ------------------------------------------------------------- 

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