Re: The future of gnome-pim - and Balsa, too?

[Toralf Lund <toralf kscanners com>]

On 2001.08.13 16:06 David Pettersson wrote:
> On 13 Aug 2001 13:49:48 +0200, Toralf Lund wrote:
> 
> (Please, no flame war ;)
Not my intention.

OK. The occasional flaming can be fun, as long as it doesn't get out of
hand.
> 
> > and its developers seem unable to give any good
> > arguments against this.
> 
> Do they need one? Evolution is to be for GNOME what Outlook is for
> Windows. I am quite sure they know that. I suspect that very few
> companies would even consider switching to GNU/Linux and GNOME if they
> didn't know that their investment (in time and training) couldn't be
> used.
I can understand this argument to a certain extent. However, I'm not sure
you would be able to convice your average management that you can switch
from Outlook to Evolution with no additional training required because it's
looks exactly the same. They will still expect that an additional
investment is required, and ask you to justify it, which you may find very
hard because you just said that Evolution is like Outlook...
> 
> Evolution is here for the corporate users and the home users that don't
> want to fiddle about with Balsa and friends. We can't make hackers out
> of people that aren't or don't want to be.
I don't think Balsa requires so much fiddling about, though. It's really a
lot simpler to use than Evolution, simply because there's less of it.

> 
> > This touches on another concern I have about GNOME: I think that too
> much time is spent on
> > emulating MS Windows behaviour. Why? Aren't we all using Linux/Unix
> because
> > Windows is crap???
> 
> No, we are using GNU/Linux, Unix and whatever other operating system we
> choose because it is better suited for the task and/or superior to the
> alternatives. Well, at least that is what I hope the majority of people
> are thinking.
Well, that was my point, really...
> 
> Regarding the adoption of Windows looks and functionality - well, until
> recently, there hade not been any usability tests of GNOME AFAIK (Sun
> did one as you might recall - and the results weren't too good IIRC).
> Microsoft has surely spent millions of dollars in HCI (Human Computer
> Interaction) studies to make their software usable.
Possibly, but knowing Microsoft's usual marketing strategies, you never
know.
> 
> But that doesn't make a difference. If average user John Doe has to
> choose between Windows and GNOME with usability in concern - I'm quite
> sure he'd choose Windows. Why? Because it is easier to use.
Actually, I don't think usability has anything to do with it. John Doe uses
Windows because everyone else does.
> 
> Let's compare the Windows Calculator with the GNOME calculator. First
> time you use the Windows Calculator it shows a standard desktop
> calculator. It has the four basic operators, memory, percentage and
> square root. Just like any other off-the-self calculator you can buy in
> the closest office supply store. Users will be familiar to the user
> interface, and will know just how to use it _immediately_.
I don't think this is true for _any_ desktop environment in general today,
though. If you put a person who has never used a computer before in front
of a Windows computer (or Macintosh or anything else), he'll be just as
confused as if you put him in front of an old fashioned teletext terminal.
It may be easier to teach him what to do, though. (But as an aside, I'm not
convinced that a graphical interface is "friendlier" or more intuitive by
nature than a textual one. For instance, if everyone knows that their word
processor is called "word", is it really less user friendly to start it by
typing just that than finding it in a deeply nested menu?)
> 
> Now take a look at the GNOME calculator. Same operation - start it up
> for the first time. What happens? The user is presented with almost
> twice as many buttons, and the average users doesn't know what to do
> with all of them if he just wants to do some summing up. It is
> confusing, and although the calculator isn't any more difficult to use,
> it appears to be and frightens the user. 
> 
> The GNOME calculator (which is a exact copy if the X calculator xcalc)
> gives hints of being a scientific calculator, but it doesn't evalute
> expressions as one (ie, 2 + 4 / 3 != 2). At least you can switch and get
> the expected behaviour in the Windows calculator.
> 
> All of these small things add up. If we want GNOME to be successful, we
> have to do something about them. I am currently working on a calculator
> for GNOME that is intended to replace the default one (if people approve
> of it). And it looks just like the calculator in Windows. And it isn't
> because I tried to mimic it - no I grabbed the closest catalogue that
> had calculators and I looked at them. And guess what, they all look like
> Microsofts calculator.
Well, obviously this is true for some applications, but not for others. I'm
just asking for a bit more critical thinking when it comes to copying MS
features, and I wish the GNOME core developers would look a bit more at
other environments, too. (E.g. I'm still missing some features from the SGI
desktop...)
> 
> GNU/Linux and GNOME already has the technical power. It is stable, bugs
> get fixed fast etc. Now we have to work on usability. Fixing things like
> the calculator and having applications like Evolution really help. But I
> don't think we should ever let usability come before robustness etc. If
> we do - I think we would be in for some real trouble.
> 
> > Having said that, I really appreciate the fact that the different types
> of
> > functionality in Evolution are split into different reusable
> components.
> > Maybe some of the good bits ought to be integrated into Balsa?
> 
> The design of Evolution is very nice, and is split up into components
> just as you say. If just want the mail part, take the mailer component,
> put it a shell (window with menus) and voila you have Balsa (more or
> less).
> 
> I'll finish of with what I started - we can't make hackers from people
> that aren't and don't want to be. Usability is important.
Quite, but we shouldn't think that people aren't willing to accept
different approaches from the ones Microsoft use just because they are
"stupid users" and not "hackers".


--
-Toralf