Re: F-Spot mission statement

["Marcus Hast" <marcushast gmail com>]

On 8/28/06, Ben Monnahan <monnahan gmail com> wrote:
> While this may have been true 1-2 years ago, now I'm not so sure.  My wife
...
> make it to them the better IMHO.  (Please understand I'm not asking for a
> completely dumbed down F-Spot either, non-technical people are intelligent,
> but we can't overload them.  Its all about making it intuitive)

Well, it may be dependent on regions and whom you know. My personal
experience (in Sweden) is that I don't know anyone whom I'd consider a
"casual" user that uses Linux in any form. (Hopefully that will change
though.)

Also I agree with you that making a "intuitive" program is good. And
that's enjoyed by "casual" and "expert" users alike.

> As I said in my other email, I don't think we need to limit ourselves to
> only serving the "casual" users.  But I'd like to see us commit to usability
> for these users first, and then add in other features for expert users where
> possible.  Plugins can hopefully big a help here, not just for
> maintainability of the code, but allowing users to pick and choose what they
> need.  Your expert features I'm sure aren't the same as mine.

Again it becomes a discussion about what features are for casual users
and what is for expert users. Eg I'd say that versioning is for expert
users. Consider that no other photo management program (that I know
of) has this feature. However I'd also say that it's one of the most
essential features in F-Spot. (It was pretty much *the* feature which
made me use it.) And if you demonstrate it for casual users they are
likely to find it just as invaluable as an expert user.

One potential drawback with plugins that I see is that you can end up
with a program which has a lot of good plugins which work well with
the basic system but which behave strange with each other.

/Marcus