On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 20:51, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 10:33:27 -0500, w9ya wrote:
>
> >> - -It would be nice if by default rpmdrake would show software that is
> >> installed. IMHO, there should be an options dialog, which has things
> >> like "show installed software in searches".
> >>
> >> Is there any reason why installed software can not be under a seperate
> >> branch of the tree view?
> >
> > Any reason it can't be in the same program, from a user's perspective ?
>
> Talking from a user's perspective- my assumption would be that a typical
> user wouldn't see the need to start one program to add or remove another
> program.
>
> Again this is just my gut feeling, but I've seen anecdotical evidence that
> as far as a user is concerned, when a program isn't on the desktop or
> menu, it doesn't exist. My conclusion: don't bother with the extra step of
> graphical software (de-)installers, why don't we just transparently
> install / remove software based on what the user indicates he wants in his
> menu or on the desktop? Of course there are gotchas with this approach,
> for instance, the user should be able to edit his menu without having the
> permissions to install/remove software. But this could also be handled
> transparently. Next to this it would have to be extremely easy to add
> programs. I envision the 'What to do?' menu always containing the common
> choices and when a user clicks a not yet installed application, then a
> installer should pop up explaining that it needs to download something,
> please wait, or that it needs the installation CD.
Attractive but not practical. Firstly...we're talking about
intuition...yet the implication of "what the user indicates he wants in
his menu" is that you open the *menu editor* to install software. That
is not intuitive, to me. The other idea, that the menus would contain
all possible software and install whatever you click on...erm...have you
thought how BIG the menus would be? Not to mention what to do about
packages that wouldn't naturally have a menu entry.
--
adamw
