Re: Control Center Behavior

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

The problem with the shell is that it just doesn't make sense to
special-case the launching of particular kinds of thing.

There are standard ways to launch apps:
 - from Nautilus
 - from the menus

if those are bad, they should be fixed. We shouldn't really create the
special magic launcher for the most-used items. Especially if we're
creating our custom optimization hack for "most-used by traditional
linux users" (preferences) instead of "most-used by most desktop
users" (applications).

The case where I'd be wrong is if preferences are special or different
in some way. i.e. I guess you could argue that the "shell" is an
application, and the control panels are dialogs of that
application. So then we'd just drop the menu items for preferences.

But in short we need to identify:

 - is the problem with using nautilus/menus really a problem 
   that applies to all apps; if so, it's broken to break 
   out or special-case preferences
 - is the problem something specific to preferences, if 
   so the shell could make sense

It needs to be identified exactly what is wrong with nautilus/menus
and what makes preferences a special case. Otherwise you're just
flailing around on gut feeling, and probably creating instability.

(Let me also echo Seth's sentiment that we should in no way listen to
polls on gnomedesktop.org. ;-) The "real desktop market" by which I
mean the easiest 5% of Microsoft market share for us to claim, in
order to get started as an interesting desktop OS, is pretty much by
definition going to be _totally_ silent on _all_ of our forums. If you
know enough about computers to distinguish GNOME from the rest of the
OS, and post to a forum, you are not a typical desktop end user, _at
all_. End of story. Your needs/wants are going to be totally
different.)

We all need to realize that if we want to succeed on the desktop, we
are going to be coding for a silent majority; and the only way to get
their needs right is to follow usability heuristic rules, and go out
and actively user test and solicit feedback.

Of course we should use hidden prefs and the occasional compromise and
so on to keep developers comfortable in the environment. But IMO we
are after users who are entirely silent in all online hacking forums.

Havoc