On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Thilo Pfennig wrote: > > The problem I see is that users are just not acting like we expect.
I definitely agree. And I think you hit one of the basic issues in: > A desktop lies the base ground for every possible activity of a user - > so it can not act like an application like Inkscape or Jokosher that > focus on a specific user group. Exactly. A desktop (especially the window manager) ends up being not only very much in your face, but at the same time it's not something where you can really specialize all that much. There is no sane "niche" outside of some really odd usage schenarios (eg small-screen mobile, or very controlled kiosk mode etc). You need to support "everybody" within some definition of "everybody". And it's not really a "choice". For example, I've obviously made it very clear that I tend to use KDE on all my machines, but the fact is, a lot of distributions end up coming with one or the other (or having support be very lopsided even when they come with both). My daughters use gnome, for example - not because I think it's "simpler" (they older one has been able to mess up the desktop and side-bars so much that anybody who claims that gnome is "uncluttered" and "simple" has obviously never seen the chaos that passed for my daughter). They use gnome because I don't actually _use_ their machines, but I maintain them, and since I was running on ppc64 and wanted a common distro for all my machines, the simplest choice was Fedora Core. Which doesn't even install KDE by default, I think (but even if it does: the default WM environment is gnome, so if you just show your kids how to use it, that's what they have). > To get more practical I think the user should be able to select his > experience level and preferences and then get the interface he likes best > (also should have the opportunity to switch later). I would _heartily_ agree with that. To get back to my daughters - the one who messed up her desktop is perfectly able to make her wall-papers be some disgustingly cute thing that has a hot-pink-on-pink theme or whatever, but she is also perfectly able to mess up the menu bar. I think she has about ten copies of the Gnome "xeyes" applet, and she ended up with TWO gnome menu entries. Would it be a bad idea to have a mode where you can't even do silly things like that by mistake? Keep the core menu entry fixed, for example? No doubt. When it comes to making a mess of it, my daughter is better at _creating_ the mess than she is at straightening the end result out. But does that mean that you shouldn't be able to configure things if you want? Hell no. It just means that _different_ users have different views of what "confusing" and "configurability" means. A lot of users will findthings confusing whether they really are or not: the problem really isn't necessarily in the desktop, but "between the keyboard and the chair". So trying to minimize confusion is just a dead end: you simply *cannot* do it. People will be confused by things that others take for granted as a "must have". Just live with it. And yes, I suspect a lot of people are like my kids - their machines are really maintained by somebody else. People who are afraid of confusing "my dear old Mum" may be in that exact situation: dear old Mum *really* isn't interested in configurability, because some people just want a web browser and an email client. Not having the configurability be visible can be a good idea. But that doesn't mean that hard-core people want to edit some windows registry-like text-only nightmare either (hey, I'm hardcore, but there's no way I want to look up config entry names with google just to figure out how to get "focus-follows-mouse" - I want the nice graphical thing, thank you very much). But yes, maybe you want to hide that one from dear old Mum, who really learnt to click her windows, and would be deathly afraid of any question she doesn't even understand. And yes, it doesn't have to be a "expert options" thing. Maybe it's a hardcoded setup that you actually have to choose in the GDM login panel: kind of like the session switcher. I'd be perfectly happy to do a big thing like that - and yet it would already be technical enough that I doubt the normal kind of "what happens if I go into the expert menu" kind of person would do it. In fact, the *best* option is to probably make the "non-expert" mode not just hide the configuration tool entries, but actually *not*even*honor* them. Why? Because then, if you screw up, you just log in to the "basic window manager", and the expert config entries you screwed up while you tested "expert mode" simply don't take effect. So even if somebody thinks he is an expert, if it gets scary, they just downgrade, and the messed-up "expert choices" simply become null and void. But thinking that "users get confused" is a reason to make it hard for users that do NOT get confused is just horrible. People differ. It's really that simple. Linus _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list Desktop_architects@lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects