Re: switching to g-c-c shell? [Was: Re: Control center and capplet merging]

[Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com>]

On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 01:16 +0200, Carlos Garnacho wrote:
> "just" feels better quoted in that piece of sarcasm, even if we do an enviable
> work and reduce the number of capplets without moving them from the menu, we 
> will have still a growing blob of uncategorized settings (at least, I think that
> the tendence to grow is quite noticeable, and even more if we mix at some point 
> g-c-c and g-s-t)
> 
> I really think that, while the PreferencesRevisited page in l.g.o has pretty 
> good ideas, we still should try to show a categorized view of all preferences,
> instead of letting users try their luck in the menu (what does "Session" beside 
> "Sound"? Why there's a separate sublevel for accessibility? ... ;)

This truly assumes that categories actually help people find what they
are looking for.  What really happens is that we dispute category names
(read Preference vs. Administration or Desktop vs. System) over and over
because groups of people don't feel it really represents what is in
there.   When none of that really helps people who don't know what they
are looking for.  "My sound doesn't work" -> Where does that person go?
Preferences?  Administration?  Help?

The problem with this idea of categorization is that, assuming no two
people are alike, the odds are very low that many of the will look in
the same category for the same thing anything.  You as computer
programmers have a much different background than most other people and
because of this use different terms to describe things.  Case in point
is the Ubuntu CollapsedPreferences wiki page [1] where a category is
named "Interface", which is a word that means something very specific to
computer people, but means next to nothing on a computer to most other
people.

Obviously category wording can always be improved, and this is where we
end up, trying to really understand "Where would the 'user' look to find
Fonts?".  Kind of an endless struggle.  I've heard people poke fun at
KDE for having a search for their mega-preference center, but I'm
guessing people are finding what they're looking for a lot better now.

The more categorization I see the on the desktop more and more I am
convinced that we should be basing our entire desktop off of a search
paradigm.  Picture Seth's little storage applet and typing "How do I
change my fonts", it'd be pretty easy to get someone the right capplet
then - sorry, total tangent.  

Cheers,
~ Bryan

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CollapsedPreferences