On Thu, Jul 26, 2007 at 11:37:33AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: > Le jeudi 26 juillet 2007 à 10:54 +0200, Wouter Verhelst a écrit : > > One thing I do not like about the GNOME usability philosophy is > > precisely this: catering for the novice user is great, but the GNOME > > usability philosophy caters for novice users *at the expense of > > experienced users*. > > This widespread belief is entirely untrue.
If it is widespread, then there must be at least some truth to that statement. > It is all about making things understandable for the novice user > without reducing functionality for experienced users; Personally, I feel that you succeed in the first but not in the last. You may disagree, but it's still why I don't like the GNOME philosophy about usability: in my opinion, many of the decisions that are made under the pretext of being good for the novice user have a number of seriously negative and problematic repercussions to the experienced user. Of course, it's okay for GNOME people to do that, as long as they don't expect me to use their system :-) > that doesn't mean removing functionality, but rather removing the > *need* for some functionality or configurability. You do not remove the need for some functionality by simply removing the functionality itself altogether, which is what I see GNOME developers do more often than other developers. Anyway, this thread is not about GNOME, but about the menu system, so let's keep it at that. I'll be happy to bash about GNOME on IRC, if you want me to :-) [...] > > If you want to do that in GNOME, go ahead, be my > > guest; I couldn't care less anyway. And in fact, I installed GNOME on my > > parent's machine, since I don't want to have to repeatedly explain them > > too much, so your philosophy has some uses. But please don't expand that > > philosophy to the rest of the Debian system, where it is totally > > useless. > > I have no business into changing other environments' menus. If you are going to modify the menu system, then that is exactly what you're doing, even if you want to modify it so that the changes remain mostly limited to GNOME: by removing the Debian menu from GNOME or modifying it so that it doesn't show what's available in all other graphical environments that are available in Debian, you're confusing users. Users who have used Debian (but not GNOME) before, users who use Debian with GNOME on one machine and a lightweight window manager on another (because, say, that other machine has less resources), and so on. I think one of the great selling points of Debian is precisely this unified menu system: no matter what window manager or graphical environment you use, there is still this single menu system that will be there, and that will contain all these applications; it is one of the few things that distinguishes Debian from other distributions. Throwing it out because you don't like the way it is structured just as it's about to be restructured seems like throwing out the kid along with the bath water to me. The right way would be to improve the menu system, so that you can be happy with it. After all, I'll be the first to agree that the way the menu system is structured currently is suboptimal. Having it everywhere, with all applications visible, *except* in GNOME, would be a big, big shame. However, I can agree that the menu system can use some improvements, and that some things (the Python example came up, but surely more can be found) simply don't belong in the menu. If you can come up with some examples, I'm sure we can discuss them, do a mass bug filing, and/or update the menu policy to reflect the stuff we agree on. [...] > > I'll agree that some things could be finetuned, and that some things > > simply don't belong in the menu system. But these things are exceptions, > > and I think most of the applications that are in the menu system > > currently do belong there. > > > > Speaking of "modifying the interface", one reason why I think the GNOME > > people have the idea that nobody ever modifies their interface is that > > it is simply too hard to modify the interface in GNOME. > > I don't think anyone claimed that nobody does modify their interface. > The problem is that the very idea of modifying it is not intuitive. Then you need to work on that. > > Adding an icon to the panel or the desktop should be a drag-and-drop > > operation. > > It is. Not in my experience. I'll be happy to provide details if you want me to. > > Changing the desktop background should not require me to add the > > image to a list of background images first before I can pick it from > > that list. > > Whoa? The background properties capplet features a button that spawns a > file chooser in which you can choose a picture and get done with it. I've had to explain that point to my dad far too often. > And that's for the complicated way; otherwise it's just a matter of > right-clicking on the picture in epiphany and selecting "use as > background". This should also be possible in nautilus, IMO. > > These are useless hoops to jump through; and even Windows has > > been doing this correctly for about 10 years. > > Talking about Windows in a thread about menus sounds... well, no > comment. *g* Anyway, again, this isn't really on topic in this discussion. -- <Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
