Re: Reducing the number of special uris in gnome

[Bruce Robert Pocock <brpocock 10east com>]

On Sat, 2002-06-29 at 07:09, Seth Nickell wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 13:41, Bruce Robert Pocock wrote:
> > On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 13:22, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > > On 28 Jun 2002, Christian Rose wrote:
> > > 
> > > > fre 2002-06-28 klockan 18.45 skrev Dave Bordoley:
> > > > > > So you want to expose the fact to users that our settings dialogs are in 
> > > > > > fact applications?
> > 
> > > > I see no reason why we should move that layout into other places. It
> > > > doesn't make sense to expose to the user that everything
> > > > implementation-wise is a seperate application, nor to force the user to
> > > > think of it like that.
> > > 
> > > Exactly. And i think we should actually move them up a level in the gnome 
> > > menu too.
> > 
> > Seconded... From a migration (from MacOS, Win32, ...) perspective, it's
> > doubly bad; in none of (MacOS 1..10, Windows) is a control panel a
> > "normal" executable, they're always something "magic." (CDEV, OSX
> > "capplets" (don't know the Apple word for this one), and CPL=DLL with
> > special hooks for Win16/Win32)...
> 
> Er. How many users actually know how these things are technically
> implemented? Actually, in MacOS 7, 8 and 9 control panels sure looked
> like normal applications. You could drag them around, run them like
> normal applications, etc. I think they even showed up in the "Recent
> applications" menu. In Windows they are presented very much like a
> normal application too, though from a slightly different part of the
> Start Menu. Technical implementation really doesn't matter here. I
> didn't even know control panels in Windows were implemented using DLLs,
> it just doesn't matter to the user.

Granted, in MacOS (7?)..9, Control Panels were treated like
applications. However, as in earlier MacOS versions, and as in all
versions of Windows, they can't be "moved around" without disabling them
- i.e. a CDEV not in the "HD:System Folder:Control Panels", or a CPL not
in the ( Windows | System | System32 ) folder is "disabled." (In the
MacOS case, the preferences can be set, but it doesn't run at startup to
enforce its preferences, similar in effect to the way some GNOME Prefs
run during login; in the Win32 case, the panel is unavailable for
editing preferences, but the Registry changes it imposes are still
enforced.)

In either case, the system creates the "mythical" "Control Panel" (in
MacOS 7..9, just a "special" folder, but in MacOS 1..6,10 & Win32, an
application unto itself: running, say, "capplets") to insulate users
from the fact that these *are* (ignoring implementation details) quite
similar to applications. Asking a couple of ("naive") Windows users,
they were very much aware of the difference between "an application" and
"a control panel;" one phrased it as:

: Applications are things that you can run, and control panels are
: things that you don't want to touch, because it'll break the computer
: if they're set wrong.

Don't know if that's an argument FOR or AGAINST implementing a split
like Win32's, since we have the "luxury" of NOT breaking the computer
regardless of the preferences chosen... But I'd like to see someone with
some user-acceptance-testing facilities (RH? Xim? Sun?) poll a few
people to see if they look for preferences under "Applications"
intuitively...