Re: [Nautilus-list] What silly preferences do we actually use (Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.)

[Thomas Cataldo <thomas cataldo laposte net>]

On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 17:05, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net> writes: 
> > Hmm.  What are they?  Why do you use them?  What tasks do they make
> > easier/more pleasant for you?  What is it about your pattern of use
> > that makes you so unique that it would be ridiculous for these
> > settings to be in the UI?
> 
> My feeling is that most desire for preferences I would consider wrong
> comes from the fact that people have used various UIs in the past, and
> don't want to learn new ones. So for example, I use odd window focus
> modes, weird Emacs-derived text keybindings, some funny
> WindowMaker-derived window manager keybindings from when I used
> WindowMaker long ago, etc. Most loud complaints about UI seem to be
> based on similar stuff - someone used to do it in X way when they used
> some other UI, and they want to keep doing it X way. Basically apps
> tend to end up supporting all modes of operation that previous apps in
> the same category have ever supported. IIRC most of the complaints
> about missing stuff in Nautilus have been about "missing" (different)
> features vs. Windows Explorer or gmc or the Mac file manager.
> 
> I totally understand that people don't want to learn anything new. At
> the same time, it really really hoses up the UI if an app is
> essentially 10 apps in one. It also makes implementation and QA a
> total nightmare.

Isn't it why a component model and gconf was added ? I watch html with
an html browser/component. This browser is just an implementation of
HtmlBrowser corba interface. I'd like to set HtmlBrowser settings in the
control center, and I have every html compoment implementing HtmlBrowser
to reuse my settings.

> 
> I think some battles caused by historical UIs are unwinnable. For
> example, focus mode for the window manager should just be in the main
> prefs dialog, even though it will really be evil for novices. But many
> other issues are small enough that we can ask people to please learn a
> new way of doing things, instead of cluttering interface and
> implementation.

imho, the real problem is not 'what is a preference', but how many time
do i have to setup the same thing to have a consistent look & feel.

For exemple, emacs keybindings on text entries is configurable for
gtkhtml, nautilus, and probably in some other places... It should be a
gtk option. The default value could be discovered from my shell
settings, because emacs keybindings are a shell setting.

Of course this point has been discussed a lot for fonts, proxy settings
(i've got $http_proxy in my shell and only console applications seems
clever enough to use it), smtp server. But developpers keep on adding
preferences for things that allready are customizable at a lower level
(e.g. why do I have text near my icons in evolution whereas my setting
in the control center is 'icons have no text').

> 
> Havoc
> 
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