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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: The art of not offering customization
From:       Kristian Koehntopp <kk () netuse ! de>
Date:       2002-05-30 14:08:41
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On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 04:16:05AM -0700, Michael W. Collette wrote:
> > Maybe you are. He (my father) has been asking for documents -
> > where are my letters, my templates for letters, my digital
> > camera images and so on. He rarely even asks for programs, he
> > wants his files and "the things that come up always when I click
> > on them". He is using the K menu to start the controlcenter,
> > everything else is icons on desktop.
 
> This is a bit of a Pandora's box.  Although KDE does deal with
> file associations quite nicely, it will never get to the point
> of either Windows or Mac... with any luck that is.  On those
> two other systems, installed programs take over, or fight
> eachother for, the system's associations.

KDE is much better with respect to this than Windows. I showed
him "Open with..." and "Dateityp bearbeiten..." (Change file
type?) last weekend, and while he recognized the concept from
Windows, he liked the execution in KDE much better and was right
at home with it.

> [ Boot messages ]
> This is purely a Suse issue.  They probably have the nicest
> looking boot up screen going, but this is being displayed long
> before KDE gets to make an appearance.
 
> I don't disagree with the idea you're presenting.  The thing
> is, there is a limited sphere of control that KDE actually has
> on the user's total experience.

I know, and I understand. In fact, I perceive this as a
shortcoming in many Open Source projects - often, more
integration would be a great boon for many projects, Network
effects and all that blah blah. That is not limited to boot
screens at all: Imagine what kdevelop could do, if gcc was a
.so or even a kpart, and kdevelop had access to gcc internal
data structures and functions to enable things like incremental
background compiles, tab-completion from the actual symbol table
and so on?

Ok, back to lurk mode again.

Kristian

-- 
Kristian Köhntopp, NetUSE AG, Dr.-Hell-Straße, D-24107 Kiel
Tel: +49 431 386 435 00, Fax: +49 431 386 435 99
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