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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Localised folders in /home/user (Documents and Desktop)
From:       Uno Engborg <uno () webworks ! se>
Date:       2006-11-25 6:44:51
Message-ID: 1164437091.20704.53.camel () localhost ! localdomain
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lör 2006-11-25 klockan 14:57 +1000 skrev David Roberts:
> > Besides, powerusers have the power to undumb a system, if we give them
> > a possibility to do so, while the newbie will not be able to dumb down
> > something complicated to fit their current level of experience.
> I have nothing against dumbing it down. All I want is to be asked "Do you want 
> KDE to dumb down the system for you?" rather than have it thrust upon me by 
> default.

>From a human/psycological point of view, this is not a good way to ask.
Nobody want to feel that they are in need of a dumbed down system. If
you are a poweruser you will know how to undumb it, and it will be a one
time operation. Exposeing complicated systems to newbies or users with
little interest in the inner workings of the system will result in a
never ending support nightmare. Defaults need to be set in a way that
they feels good and natural to the majority of the intended users.

Today it is very hard to find a web site, or a magazine that deals with
open source that doesn't mention "The year of the Linux Desktop" at
least once a year. One of the reasons that year havn't arrived just yet,
are the far to often heard sentence: "But you can configure it to be
simple" The desktop needs to be simple out of the box, or the average
Joe won't touch it.

> 
> > Powerusers as well as newbies benefit from the use simple easily
> > understandable unambigous metaphores. The desktop should be a desktop
> > and just a desktop, not some part of your file cabinet. The same line
> > of reasoning could be applied to the Trash.
> >
> > In fact KDE have allready going in this direction. The Trash is a hidden
> > file on the file system and it doesn't show up in normal
> > file browsing the same thing could be true for Desktop.
> Yes. Having a visible ~/Desktop has puzzled me ever since I started using 
> KDE - it seems rather pointless, and is rather inconsistent with having trash 
> hidden.
> 
> > USB sticks, CD-ROMs and other things that the user  can connect to their
> > computer, or disconnect and put in their pocket, should appear as if
> > they where separate artefacts when they are mounted on the computer.
> > I.e. there should be no up arrow if you browse them  in konquerer.
> I'm assuming you're referring to KDE's use of /media? To be honest, I like 
> this system as it means removable devices integrate better to the local 
> filesystem - even though they are seperate devices, at the time they are part 
> of the one system.

I have no problem with mounting them in /media as they as you say they
are part of one system. 

The problem is, that this is poweruser knowledge. Most users will think
of their USB stick as a separate entity even when it is connected. E.g.
they might say things like: "Please move the report to my USB stick"

The idea of mounting disks, and making them part of one system comes
from the days when disk management was something done by sysadmins in
white coates at the data center to which normal users had no access.

Back then, hiding physical units made it much easier on the users, as
they didn't need to know what physical media they were using. Nowdays,
when we have  user mountable/removable media, that idea sort of fall
apart. If the user can add and remove the media without a screw driver,
it should be regarded as a separate unit, at least with respect to the
desktop. The  fact that we need to mount it somewhere to make Unix work
is poweruser stuff.


> 
> > Another thing, in discussions like this, we often hear that we should
> > do design the GUI in this or that way because the Unix shell works in a
> > certain way. If we want good integration between GUI and CLI we must be
> > prepared to change both of them. E.g. why not make a bash fork
> > (perhpaps we could call it kash) that understood .hidden files
> > and .directory files, but in all other respects behaved like bash.
> I don't like the idea of fragmenting from bash. In what way do you mean it 
> understands .hidden and .directory files?

Well, filnames listed in a .hidden file, in a certain directory should
be handled like dot files, i.e be listed only if you do ls -a.

It could also handle localized file names. However localized names in
the shell will require a lot of thought to get right. I don't have all
the answers right now.

Regards
Uno Engborg

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