A different point of vision (was: Appearance capplet)

[Luca Ferretti <elle uca libero it>]

Hi everyone,

sorry to start a new thread, but I strongly desire this email will not
missed in previous *cough*flame*cough* discussion.

I've recently started helping a man to use and maintain his computer. He
was a professor of engineering at university, but he had an ictus some
years ago and now he's able to move only his right arm and head. He
recently started to use Linux, and we switched from KDE to GNOME 4 weeks
ago. We could say he's a "virgin of GNOME"[1]. No bias, no strong
interest in GNOME vs KDE vs MacOS vs Win. Just "I want to use this
fuc***ng computer".

Some days ago he asked me how to enlarge the text on screen, so I showed
him the Fonts tab in Appearance preference tool[2]. Then we explored the
other options available in this tool.

In the (infamous and so hated) Interface tab he found really useful the
ability to change the setting for toolbar items, and he chosen to stay
with "text only", saying he prefers to read a label then try to figure
what an icon means.

What's the point of this? Well, firstly report that some people actually
use some "weird" setting, secondly that even if unused, some preferences
are better to stay in a "visible" place then in a not-yet-available
tweak UI or gconf-editor[3]. Someone could need them or, at least, will
appreciate their availability and discoverability. 

When that man used the Interface tab to adjust the setting for himself I
was really proud that "my" GNOME Desktop was able to provide something
that was useful. I really hope GNOME we'll be able to keep this level of
user-friendship.

Cheers, Luca.

[1] insert a sexist joke here :P
[2] OT: this should also tell us that font settings are not immediately
discoverable :|
[3] another OT: honestly I've a bad feeling with any sort of tweak tool
in GNOME. We already have gconf-editor for "real" tweaks, adding a GUI
tool to pack options makes me feel we was unable to choose the proper
ones and put them in the proper place :(