Re: What I'm doing

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
To: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Wednesday, August 12, 1998 2:10 AM
Subject: Re: What I'm doing


>Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com> wrote:
>> I don't want to hear a *WORD* about File until everything that genuinely
>> pisses off users is fixed.  How's THAT for a Proposal?
>
>good for a shoutout. bad for a proposal. :)
>
>quiz: how many users need to be pissed off? different users will have
>different needs. which ones' do we attend?


I'd say *many* more users are pissed off about the utter mess that their
launch menus become every time they install something new.

I'd say *many* more users are pissed off about their applications crashing.

I'd say *many* more users are pissed off about every time they modify a
system setting, they have to reboot.

You can't quantify the numbers, but you can qualify them.  When you get down
to it, if you walk up to somebody and you say "doesn't the file menu suck?",
they're probably not going to have a clue why, and will probably disagree
with you.  You can say this is because they've been polluted by Microsoft
and Apple and Xerox ad inifinitum, but the fact remains that Users generally
don't have a problem with the File menu and the fact also remains that,
scientifically, this is the most usable menu by nature of being the most
understood and remembered.

You might wonder why I say the above.  Linux is winning because it's
*PRAGMATICALLY* better.  Nobody cares about the fact that Linux is coded
better, or more elegantly, or with greater freedom, or is based on 30 years
of research, or whatever.

People are turning to Linux because it works.

So, when you ask "which ones' do we attend", I say we attend to the
pragmatic users because those are our users, no question.  Now, you can
argue that for a *very small* subset of the computer-using population, Fle
doesn't work--it's confusing and illogical.  But, since we can prove the
vast majority of computer users use and understand this menu for what it is,
we have to attack those areas in which we can predict large portions of our
clientele are having problems.

Help systems have problems.  They're too dense, and too hard to create.
Both ends of the user/developer relationship get burned by them.  Recordable
Interfaces(Screenplays and family) address this, to a degree.

Linux Hardware Autodetection has problems, though it's getting better.
Users are getting burned here.  Redhat has gone a long way in fixing this.

I can bring up a million examples.  Point is, File is really not something
that's relevant.  FIX WHAT THE USER HATES LEST THE USER HATE YOU.

>and while I'm doing the mail backwards anyway: I do agree that the things
>people hate are the most important ones. it just doesn't mean we have to do
>them first. :)


It does mean that we need to concentrate our energies on making people
happy, not on doing the absolute pure thing, damn the pragmatic effect.

>
>--
>Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
> -- Henry Spencer
>
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