Re: What I'm doing

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

Dan Effugas Kaminsky <effugas@best.com> wrote:
> >looks like you  got parts of it. the fancy thing  was that for once there's
> >quite a difference to windoze, because there is a  user-created structure,
> >not just one  big  "program" menu  where every install thing dumps its
> >icons.
> 
> That's just it...users really don't mess with user created
> structures....they don't make user created structures...they just don't.

why are you so sure? they don't at the moment, with the tools at hand with
other systems. and we've had that discussion already, we agreed that it's an
awful mess to customize your windoze stuff, and I pointed out that what I
have in mind is not only much easier, but also quite different.


> *I* just don't, and I've never seen anybody who did.  It's really easy
> to...just nobody does it.  This is seriously a research thing, Tom.  It is
> incredible how lazy us users are.

I know, I'm one myself. but there are various aspects to lazyness. the guy
who invented the wheel was probably lazy as hell - see it? people are ALSO 
lazy when it comes to hunting around for their app every time.

the critical point here is that it will happen AUTOMATICALLY.



> >(for example having games and apps in seperate folders is useful to almost
> >everyone except those people who don't have a single game (I don't think
> >there are pure gamers on Linux already).
> 
> Well, obviously you wouldn't have a folder for games to go into if you have
> no games.

correct. it's 2 clicks away to delete that folder. or you can leave it just
in case you want to install samegnome one day.


> I don't think our solutions are that far off, Tom.  We BOTH want the user to
> be able to redirect where installs go.  What I think your error is is that
> you think that user shouldn't be given that detailed of an install system to
> begin with.  The fact is, and you can't get around this:  Users will, in
> general, place applications wherever the default places them.

EXACTLY!
dan, you ARE talking about the same problem. what I want is a sane, but
user-definable default. it's not the app that decides where it should go,
it's the user. if he doesn't care, a sane system default should be used. but
if he does care - and many more people than you would believe DO - then it
should be insanely easy to configure it.


> >I don't think it's a style issue. any, and I mean ANY, user-level stuff
> that
> >requires a reboot is a big, fat bug. simple as that. the uptime of the
> >machine I'm writing this on is at (shell) 122 days now. I'm NOT going to
> >reboot for ANY application, no matter what it is. that's not a style issue,
> >it's a question of whether you're writing unix or windoze apps.
> 
> Windoze apps shouldn't require reboots either.  Did you know maybe between a
> third and a half of windows reboots requested by software are NOT NECESSARY?

I did know. but the other half is a sure sign of a broken SYSTEM, not a
broken STYLE. that's why this doesn't belong into the style guide. it has
nothing to do with user interface.


> Like I said earlier, GNOME itself maybe a unix app, but the style guide
> should be applicable everywhere just like the Macintosh Human Interface
> Guidelines are applicable everywhere.

you're not making sense to me. gnome is a unix app and we're writing a gnome
style guide that should be applicable OUTSIDE the gnome environment?


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