Re: article

[Preben Randhol <randhol dusken4 samfundet ntnu no>]

* Tom Vogt
| I propose everybody involved in here should take at least a quick look into
| the research done at PARC - you know, the place where they invented the
| mouse.

Haven't done this yet. Do you have a link btw.

 
| there's also a good article about this at 
| http://slashdot.org/features/9807070857253.shtml

But I read this one. 

Frustration: "It is so easy that even your mom can use it." Why does
everybody thinks that moms are worse at computers than dads? My mom
knows more about computers than dad, not that any knows much though :)

But here goes:

The oversimplifying which reduces the freedom is always something I
fear. At odd times I have to help somebody with Windows and I am
always annoyed that I cannot easily roam around the system with a
shell like in Linux. So taking away the shell, could of course make
things "safer", but you then also take away the power and freedom.

This said I see a very interesting project; GNOME - KID (not that I
want this name... but you get it...)

I think that the ideas presented won't fit into a general GNOME, but a
lightweight GNOME for kids and parents who only wants to do stuff like
balance their account, doing the homework, writing letters and reading
email. Of course it goes without saying that the system needs to be
very stable... One could intensify the use of the mouse with
DND, clicking on buttons on the panels ect. 

I think that if such a system should work it need to be only a sub-set
of a more general and powerful Gnome. A version that users can step up
too when they have gotten familiar with the lightweight version and
needs more power. And of course a general Gnome version should give
Linux users of today all the power that are presently available.

An example:

My little sister (14 year of age now) has my old Amiga 500 computer at
home. She uses this computer to learn new words in English and
French. And she also uses a program called CLAS to learn other things
like math, science etc... I'm running the UAE emulator on my Linux box.
Thus I can sit 1000 kilo meters away and make math and word tests
which I send to her on a small floppy disk. She could also have used
the word processor, had it not been for the fact that the printer is
more or less broken down. This machine is slooooooow compared to those
I use, but it does the trick and it is easy to use.
 
PS: My plas are to make programs like the two amiga programs mentioned
above using the GTK toolkit and converting them to GNOME if I get them
working properly... And I will probably make two versions eventually
-- one for beginners and one for advanced users.


As always I want comments on these ideas...

-- 
Preben Randhol                    | Azh nazg durbataluk, azh nazg
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