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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Question about your KPresenter's review
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2002-02-11 9:31:44
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On Monday 11 February 2002 07:42, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
> On Sunday 10 February 2002 08:15 am, David Faure wrote:
> 
> > The documentation is being worked on - by the very brave team of
> > documentation writers. Have a look at koffice/doc/kpresenter on
> > webcvs.kde.org.
> 
> I will do so.  Thank you.  As I just pointed out to Thomas Zander in respond 
> to a posting by him, though, an end user is not likely to think of trolling 
> the Web for information on an application.  Perhaps more to the point, an end 
> user who finds that the program interface and on-line help do not enlighten 
> them about how to use the program's basic features is likely to throw his or 
> her hands up in frustration *before* getting around to looking on the Web for 
> information and guidance.

You got me wrong! I never said users should go onto a website to find documentation!
I was just saying that the next version will come with improved documentation,
and that if you wanted to have a look at the current state on the documentation
you could find that on webcvs.kde.org!

> >  But since the UI needs to be improved first, as you noted
> > (same work as the one that was done on KWord, cleaning up menus and
> > toolbars), it'd be a better idea to do that first, before finishing the
> > documentation.
> 
> I have mixed feelings about this.  I believe the UI needs to be improved.  On 
> the other hand, KPresenter is out there *now*, and it does perform the basic 
> tasks--if the user can only figure out how to do so.  Fixing the 
> documentation first will give users incentives to try using KPresenter now.  
> If you fix the program first, you may find that the users who might have been 
> willing to give it a try have already given up on it.
 
I don't think it's a good idea to write documentation about "a crippled UI".
 
> > The current work on KPresenter includes zoom support, and using the same
> > text-formatting object as KWord, bringing WYSIWYG, more fine-grained
> > text-formatting options (e.g. different types of paragraph in the same
> > text object etc.)
> 
> All of these sound like improvements.  If you like, you can send me the 
> current version and I will happily attempt to use it, see whether I run into 
> any other problems/bugs, and let you know about them.

I can't "send it to you". KOffice CVS requires Qt3 and KDE3, and KPresenter is
under heavy development... better wait a bit. But if you can compile source
code or if you can get Eric to do it ;), you can always grab the latest stuff using anoncvs 
(http://www.kde.org/anoncvs.html)
 
> that the KDE team 
> needs feedback from non-technical end users in order to achieve a level of 
> performance that will interest potential users outside the Linux community.

Not the kind of feedback that basically says "your program and its documentation
suck, you need to improve it *now*", especially when the main problem is lack
of developers / time.
 
> But  David, that's the point.  :-)  *You* had no problem using the program 
> because you helped write it, and understood what features were available and 
> how to use them.  

No, I started using it BEFORE I hacked it. I only fixed a few things that were
needed at the time, but I'm not person who initially developer KPresenter.
I found it quite nice to use even before I had any idea about its source code.

> Out of curiosity, which other "applications for making presentations" have 
> you tried to use?

Powerpoint.

> I had never used a presentations application before my experience with 
> KPresenter.  However, afterward I experimented a little with MS 
> PowerPoint--and found text editing, at least, to be a lot easier to deduce 
> and less frustrating.

Doesn't powerpoint work the same way? Click on object to move it,
double-click on it to edit it ? 

-- 
David FAURE, david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~david, http://www.konqueror.org
KDE 3.0: Konquering the Desktops

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