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: Friday, August 14, 1998 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: What I'm doing


>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.


Users will keep whatever they're given.  For crying out loud, it's just
highlight-and-delete to remove something from the Windows Desktop, and you'd
be surprised how much stuff will linger on many people's desktops!

I am definitely not seeing your point here.  From where I'm coming from,
either an app default installs into a detailed heirarchy, with runbox
access(still working on this specification), or it installs into some kind
of non-detailed heirarchy with an option to place it somewhere better(the
Windows way).

>> >(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.


Wasteful.  "Oh, yeah, I have no games.  Oh, yeah, I have no ping tool."
Empty menus are usually bad ideas.

>
>> 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.


OK, I like what you're talking about--some kind of system that lets the user
change the way the system automatically places things in heirarchies.

Only problem is--I can't think of how the heck this would work.  I really
can't.

>[reboots are a style issue]
>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.


Consider a new operating system being designed to fit with GNOME.  Consider
a GNOME patch for Windows(it could happen; litestep exists and works great).
One could say that multitasking is a system issue, and not a user issue, but
from my perspective the ability to run two apps at once is what makes
Windows 3.1 far more useful than DOS, and Windows 95 far more useful than
Windows 3.1, and Windows NT far more useful than Windows 95, and Linux far
more useful than anything of Microsoft's.  Yes, multitasking is a
system-level thing, but it's also very user-level too.

The original Macintosh HCI guidelines were written at a time when Macintosh
could only run one program at a time.  They mention this, and they talk
about ways to deal with this.  System level conditions can also be user
level conditions.  The GNOME Style Sheet should not specify, for example,
that the CPU recieve HLT instructions to keep it cool--this isn't really a
user level thing.  But, things that directly affect the user experience--the
ability to multitask, and the ability to continue running through the vast
majority of changes--these are things that are part of the style sheet,
because *THESE ARE THINGS THE USER INTERPRETS AS PART OF THE STYLE OF THE
OPERATING SYSTEM*.

>
>> 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?


GNOME is, right now, a UNIX app.  Litestep is a port of the Afterstep
environment for Windows.  GNOME may eventually be ported to
Windows...VMS...DOS(caldera DR-DOS), Java, even systems we've never heard of
right now.  It makes no sense to reject styles because they are "redundant
with Linux" or to accept styles that force Linux to be used.  We can provide
Linux source code, but we should have things like "Rightclicking on Foo will
bring up the /proc file system"--only things like "Rightclicking on Foo will
bring up a process listing file system, if one is available".

Remember:  CSS--Cascading Style Sheets--have become popular because they
offer an effective way to separate data from presentation.  The style is the
presentation.  Rebooting is a bad way to present data!