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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: NWI: metaphor needed?
From:       Peter <gostelow () global ! co ! za>
Date:       2009-07-02 23:37:49
Message-ID: 200907022337.53341.gostelow () global ! co ! za
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On Thursday 02 July 2009 12:22, Diego Moya wrote:
> 2009/7/2 Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@gmail.com>:
> >> The meta-application
> >> manages the real applications, so users can layout the apps as a single
> >> application.
> >
> > ‎That's Konqueror, at least for read-only apps.
>
> But only at file-based granularity. As I understand Pete's idea, this
> should also work for applying specific functions on a particular
> subset of data instances (objects). An example would be: I want a
> single application where the menu options are "arrange code" taken
> from KDevelop, "spellcheck" taken from KWord and "send mail" taken
> from KMail. All them can be applied to the selected text in my current
> document.

Exactly.

>
> >> users need to combine functions from various apps, not the apps
> >> themselves.
> >
> > Flake is how Koffice does this across it's particular apps. Maybe this
> > could be expanded to all of KDE?
>
> Being a library, Flake seems too low-level to achieve this goal for
> the final user. But yes, the basic idea to combine data objects and
> tools that work on them seems similar.

Unfortunately, non-KDE apps (such as firefox?) may not decompose well and 
annoy users. The alternative is ignore the apps and work on the data itself 
using dedicated desktop tools.

>
> >> three technologies are hidden to the user, they can be made accessible
> >> and used to create a powerful user toolbox. Now NWI could bring all
> >> these together as a single application.
> >
> > Actually, that is quite what those technologies were designed for from
> > what I understand.

Yes, but for developers to embed them into apps. I believe they should be 
'lifted' to the user level.

>
> The 'made accessible' is the tricky part. This is actually an unsolved
> problem even in academy research, how to present GUI-based data piping
> to the end user in a friendly way. Of course all new approaches are
> welcome, and NWI could be a good basis for this 'holy grial' of the
> user interface, if only it was a little less geometry-oriented and a
> little more task-conscious.

My idea was to provide a UI for dbus, kparts, etc. and in that way they become 
accessible to the user.

Regards,

Peter
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