Re: Archive Generator -- a system tool?

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

Archive generator is definitely not an accessory. Accessories are things
that relate to the "real world" rather than tools for tinkering with
things on the computer. System tools are, well, tools for working with
your computer system. The archive generator falls smack down in the
middle of "tools for working with your computer system", since tarballs
and the like are a concept that's planted squarely in the computer
world.

BTW, these menu categories are based on a number of card sorts
(attention Havoc!), not just theoretical ideas pulled out of my ass. I
took the results of the card sorts (where a group of subjects are asked
to categorize a bunch of cards containing a name and a brief description
of what it does) and made a set of categories that reflected the most
common arrangements. Then I tried to deduce what the reasoning was that
led to these categories to provide principles to guide future
applications as to where to put their items without having to do the
card sort over and over ;-)

People consistently put items that related to the real world somehow in
a different category from other small items that deal exclusively with
computer-y sorts of things. I named these "Accessories" and "System
Tools". Not great names, but I couldn't think of anything better. A
quick rule of thumb for deciding the difference between an accessory and
a system tool:

  - If desktop computers did not exist would the functionality provided
by this tool have any relevance? If the answer is "yes", its an
accessory, if the answer is "no", it is a system tool.

So for example, a calculator for doing arithmetic makes sense in a world
without desktop computers. An archive generator, however, would be
useless. A system monitor would not really have any meaning, whereas a
tool for jotting down notes is still useful. Something for viewing the
system log doesn't mean anything without computers, whereas a dictionary
for looking up words does. etc.

Although I haven't looked at the RH beta, my guess is that RH found the
"System" menu growing too large owing to the large number of
administration tools they usually install, and found it necessary to
"clean it out". It would be better to seperate the "System" menu into
two menus rather than mucking with proper categorization. Though I don't
have the items sitting in front of me, I would suggest creating an
"Administration" or "System Configuration" menu or something like it,
either as a sub-category of the "System Tools" menu or as a new
top-level menu.

-Seth

On Thu, 2002-08-08 at 06:44, Ross Burton wrote:
> I'm currently running through all of the .desktop files I can find and
> fixing them (using desktop-file-validate).
> 
> At the same time I'm making sure the Categories fields are as verbose as
> possible... and found meat-grinder.
> 
> It thinks it is a:
> 
> Categories=Application;Utility;System;
> 
> Which makes it appear under System.  Surely an archive generator is an
> accessory, so should loose the System keyword?
> 
> I am also adding GNOME to all of the Categories lists, which I assume is
> A Good Thing. Shout now or forever hold you peace if this isn't. ;)
> 
> Regards,
> Ross
> -- 
> Ross Burton                                 mail: ross burtonini com
>                                            jabber: ross nerdfest org
>                                      www: http://www.burtonini.com./
>  PGP Fingerprint: 1A21 F5B0 D8D0 CFE3 81D4 E25A 2D09 E447 D0B4 33DF
> 
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