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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Kicker bar maiming
From:       Frans Englich <frans.englich () telia ! com>
Date:       2003-12-21 16:13:04
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On Sunday 21 December 2003 16:55, Troels Tolstrup wrote:
> On Sunday 21 December 2003 16:09, Michael Pye wrote:
> > This is how I would like to see it. The default install is performed by a
> > certain class of user, so surely it should target this group.
> >
> > Distros choose their own target audiences and can use KDE's great
> > flexibilty to please them.
> >
> > Sensible defaults are important, but I think we should recognise that
> > there is generally another step between a KDE release and an end user.
>
> I don't think this is right.
> Yes, the distros can, and does to some extend, modify the defaults. And i
> think the kicker icons is probably the heaviest customized part too, but i
> generally think we should set a good example and try to provide the best
> set of defaults for as broad a range of users as possible.

Agreed 100%

Most of us want KDE to be shipped unaltered - just notice how pissed of (fully 
justified) people gets when Redhat mess around. It not only makes 
bughunting(from our perspective) harder but also shrinks our influense in the 
open source world. If distros ship KDE unaltered it is a way of setting de 
facto standards - that's why KDE with its non-profit goals should provide 
system management and package tools to set a de facto standard instead of 
having the commercial fighting over it, messing up the technologies. 
Debian, Slackware and probably alot of other upcoming KDE based(think 
kde-debian) distros will gain alot from having good "vanilla" kde packages. 
From a pragmatical viewpoint you also save work - better to do it one place 
than several.

That the distros change the default kicker buttons is perhaps a ringing bell 
for that our defaults isn't that good.

> Right now the largest user base is probably technical users, but i think
> the number of non tech users who is using kde is growing rapidly, and from
> my personal experience they have a few problems with stock kde, which are
> very easy (for me) to correct, but almost impossible for them. That is,
> they can correct it once they learn how to do it, but by that point they
> might know enough to not care anylonger.

Agreed 100%

> I think one issue is too many icons on kicker and the multi level kmenu. (i
> personally think the "more programs" is quite broken, and that it is a sign
> that the programs in question should perhaps not be shipped with kde)
> (note, this is not to say that said programs should be removed, but that
> they could maybe be moved to other modules or shipped separately like
> kde-extragear) Yes, i know that this is really a job for the distros, but
> they generally don't do that, and i can't see this change. (debian does it
> to some extend, but i think they are alone)

Agreed 105%


			Frans

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