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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Localised folders in /home/user (Documents and > Desktop)
From:       Kåre_Särs <kare.sars () kolumbus ! fi>
Date:       2006-11-27 8:08:20
Message-ID: 200611271008.21695.kare.sars () kolumbus ! fi
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>
> Nobody proved it is a good thing. Of course going up and down is ok
> (for "normal" user) as long as she/he is going within undertandable
> context. If she/he went so up that she/he ended in "my computer" it
> is similar to wake up in alice wonderland -- "where am I?". It is
> really confusing.
>
> There should be let's name it "end-points" -- if normal user works
> within "Documents" (one of end-points) voila, do what you want, but
> don't go to /home/user or /home or even worse / -- because once the
> user saw all those creatures like /dev/, /tmp/, /root she/he will
> panic and call it an error.
>
> For powerusers -- go where you want, no end-points, no limits.
>
> End-points (in my opinion) -- Documents, Home, all media devices but
> for each device (probably missed something).
>
> It is good thing to realize what _really_ normal user has to know to
> write a document or browse a web page. And remove all obstacles for
> her/him. That's a task for designers -- problem solved from the
> beginning, not by each end-user. Knowledge of Unix filesystem is not
> necessary to do all common tasks -- so better to hide it.
>
We are not building a system for total morons. A "Normal" user can easily 
learn that when I plug in my USB stick an icon appears on the desktop and 
that the files can be accessed by clicking the icon. This same user might not 
care that the URL says /media/MyUSB but it does not hinder him/her. If KDE 
only would show MyUSB in the URL and a non-KDE application would 
show /media/MyUSB, that would be really confusing. "Am I editing the same 
document?" 

(I'm using Kubuntu Edgy that's why I have /media/MyUSB not media:/MyUSB and I 
think that is a really great addition to KDE even tho I usually don't like 
distro specific modifications to KDE)

There are a lot of applications especially on Windows that try to hide the 
file system hierarchy and implement their own "User friendly" document 
handling (own databases, ...), with the only result that most users get 
totally lost and cannot find their files.

/Kåre

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