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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Is the control center really the one target ?
From:       Philippe Fremy <phil () freehackers ! org>
Date:       2003-02-25 15:20:40
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On Monday 24 February 2003 19:29, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Sunday 23 February 2003 02:59, Philippe Fremy wrote:
> > 	. The common windows shortcut <backspace> to get up one dir did not
> > work and it is tiresome to get to the up arrow of konqueror, because it
> > is far from the place you are working on.
>
> backspace deletes, doesn't it? ;-)
>
> try Alt-Up Arrow; a reference to the Up Arrow icon, in fact.

Ok, my mistake. And it is fare more intuitive, congratulation to KDE.

> > 	. How do you drop a file in the current directory if the directory
> > contains only directories ?
>
> drop it on the window itself (the "white space")

what if the window is 90% overlapped by another window ? You can switch 
windows while drag'n dropping.

I find it unintuitive. You are working on the files but have to go to the 
location bar. Anyway, I don't have any better solution.

> > 	- you can send your pgp key through the attachment menu but kmail does
> > not know what to do with it when it receives it.
>
> this is a job for mimetypes.

Then it is a kpgp wish item.

> > 	- aegypten support is still painful to get
>
> yep...

Do you know if it is possible to package it with KDE ? The interest of 
sending a encrypted mail with a clear document is not obvious to me. 
Usually, you crypt documents, not mails.

> > 	- how do I open an external folder, for example a mbox folder that
> > comes from another account ?
>
> Tools -> Import

Ok, I missed it. I manage to import some outlook 2000 folders using libpst. 
Would be a really cool feature for kmail.

> > 	- I have disabled threading because it simply sucks.
>
> heh.. nothing like helpful reports.

This is my personal grudge against kmail developers. I have tried for a long 
time to improve it, I even sent a patch to the list. The patch was 
considered good be never included. Each time I suggest to improve threading 
one way or the other, I am ditched away. Maybe I failed again to use the 
politically correct wording. But as you Aaron said once, submitting 
something to kmail requires a lot of work. Sometimes, I feel the developers 
are really stubborn.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54474
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9319


> > 	- when I reply to someone who sent my a signed mail, the PGP lines are
> > included in the reply. That's 10 lines I need to remove on every reply.
>
> they don't show up here. maybe that's because i have GPG support turned
> on so it is GPG aware?

Indeed. And my bug submitted regarding this was ditched away too with 
"please install gpg". What a good user support! How many of KDE users have 
GPG installed ? Hopefully, the wishitem is now opened again, alhtough 
nobody is going to implement it.

> > Konqueror:
> > 	- I just switch from mozilla to knoqueror, how do I import my
> > bookmarks ?
>
> open the bookmark editor, File -> Import -> Mozilla. what do you suggest?

I missed it. Probably because I am used to manage my bookmarks in the left 
pane. Sorry for that. Anyway, a good help would have solved this problem.

> > 	- konqueror has simply no help. How do I know all the possible
> > ioslaves ?
>
> you shouldn't need to. there should be interfaces to them. the network
> sidebar tab REALLY needs a lot of work done on it to help facilitate
> this.

Or at least provide some documentation.

> > kcalc: A very good example on how you can copy a real interface into a
> > gui and make it actually suck even more than the original one.
>
> just like virtually every other GUI calculator out there. do you have a
> better design you can contribute to KDE?

I have some ideas but I am pretty busy right now. KCalc is really under the 
basic level of usability. Things I would want to see:
- when you type 3 +, see on the screen the "3 +" so that you know where you 
are
- when you type a operation key, display it
- access the previous result, usually, you want to reuse them.
- allow to edit complex expression. Maybe it could use KFormula. He, that 
would rock! Very often, scientist have a complex formaly to calculate. They 
would edit the formula with kformula, and then provide the missing values. 
Innovation in a calculator, at last.

> > When I click on help in an application, why do I get a contents (the
> > left pane) filled with no item related to the help I am browsing ?
>
> because the help system sucks ;-)

Someone should really work on that. A good help system can counterfeit a bad 
usability. I am discovering OpenOffice recentely and they have a very good 
help. I more productive with it than I ever was with Word, simply because I 
am able to teach myself new features and to read documentation.

All and all, many of my critics were unfunded. But it does not change the 
result. I was not able to use the tools properly. I am probably too 
impatient. This is what a windows guy is going to experiment.

	Philippe











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