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List:       mandrake-newbie
Subject:    Re: [newbie] A note about user-friendliness
From:       Salvatore Enrico Indiogine <eindiog () pnm ! com>
Date:       2001-07-09 20:44:29
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Re. the MS fonts in exe format.  

I have not tried it, but it seems that unzip on Linux is able to handle exe 
zip files.

What I did was to burn the windows fonts on a CD and install then on all MDK 
computers using the MDK font installer.  Easy to do.

Eric Indiogine

On Monday 09 July 2001 13:22, jennifer wrote:
> Perhaps this is off subject and I certainly would not
> want to start a "linux is bad, very very bad" war,but
> it seems to me that in my few short weeks apart of
> this list, I have seen more questions around things,
> like fonts, sound cards and video cards. Now, I know
> hardware support is not Mandrakes fault, but the font
> thing does sort of blow my mind. Althought it does not
> *seem* like a usability issue, it has certainly
> hindered my abilility to solve my own problems.
> For instance...I want to download the reference manual
> off of mandrakes website. I visit the page and can't
> read a thing. Fonts are messed up. So I join a mailing
> list that gives me advice on how to fix my fonts.
> (xfree86 file) Great, that helps, but I still can't
> see windows fonts. (or mandrakes webpage) Mailing list
> advice: Import windows fonts. But I can't do that, I
> don't have windows installed on the same machine.
> Mailing list advice: I get links to websites to
> download Font files. Can you guess what happenes next?
> They files are all executable or in "windows format"
> And don't tell me to run WiNE! I can't even download a
> manual to tell me what WINE is!!!
>
> My fonts are still not perfect. Ans what really gets
> me is that the Mandrake web-developers created half
> their site in the "unreadable-by-linux-Arial font
> face"
>
> I did finally find instructions on the mandrake
> website on how to rememdy this problem. But I had to
> copy the text from the unreadable arial-font-faced
> webpage and copy it into Star-office.And the
> instructions are timeconsuming...at least for someone
> who justs want to surf the web after this whole
> ordeal.
>
> All this hassle just to be able to read information
> from the manufacturers website.
>
> By no means take this as Linux-bashing. I love the
> system and enjoy learning all it quirks. The moral of
> my story is: Sometimes pretty colors and good-looking
> fonts make computing a whole lot easier.
>
> <smiles>
>
>  And don't call me Judy!
>
> --- civileme <civileme@mandrakesoft.com> wrote:
> > Mandrake is already rejected by many who like to
> > think of themselves as l33t,
> > but I don't believe we have lost that much of the
> > power of linux.  The point
> > is this; we believe that a system can be powerful,
> > flexible, and
> > user-friendly.  The power and flexibility are
> > built-in for linux so much of
> > our work is on user-friendliness.
> >
> > We therefore welcome input on it.
> >
> > We don't happen to believe that Microsoft has
> > necessarily found the best
> > solution to any one problem associated with use.
> > (Who would intuit that you
> > press the "Start" key to shut down?)  It is a major
> > force because many people
> > are familiar with it, but the style it provides is
> > not necessarily the best.
> >
> > We may have no better idea what is intuitive and
> > what is not than they do, so
> > that is where the folks here can help us.  Think
> > carefully, when confused,
> > and note the steps you take to do things with your
> > computer.
> >
> > We know we're producing a counter-intuitive
> > interface when a lot of folks are
> > reporting errors we cannot reproduce.  This happens
> > frequently with software
> > manager right now.
> >
> > If people would take notes of a session they had
> > with software manager, we
> > would be able to see where their intuition leads
> > them (we are spoiled by
> > being close to its design and implementation, so
> > what we do [wihout thinking
> > much about it] is already trained to a certain
> > procedure) and we would be
> > able to make the software more truly intuitive in
> > its user interface.
> >
> > I hope you get the idea. help us help you, by taking
> > a few notes on your
> > steps, either as you make them (preferable) or when
> > something goes wrong.
> >
> > Microsoft would like you to think theirs is
> > intuitive, and Apple would like
> > you to think it is them instead.  But the fact is,
> > no one to my knowledge has
> > done the interfaces with lots of user feedback where
> > the users consciously
> > participated and statistics were used routinely to
> > study the data and come up
> > with something that is close to what people want.
> >
> > The next question of course, is does such a solution
> > exist?  Or do we have
> > many that will be considered roughly equally
> > intuitive?  I know one way to
> > discover that answer. :-)
> >
> > Civileme
>
> =====
> Jennifer
> Registered Linux User #221463
> Yahoo IM: jlynn2k
>
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