Re: Template system

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 22:05, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote:
> > Distros should not add templates for users. How the heck would RedHat
> > know what sort of documents you normally create?
> 
> <sarcasm>
> I don't know, but perhaps user studies?
> </sarcasm>
> 
> =)

So, Red Hat would do user studies, and then come up with the fact that I
want a gnumeric template for doing lists of appartments that I use when
scheduling looking at new appartments? Or templates for the invoices
(with personal details) I send every month? I don't think so, they'll
end up with crap templates that create empty documents or uber-generic
letter templates. Those are of no real practical use once you've learned
the system.

> >  Unless you want the
> > useless "New HTML document" crap that some OSes have.
> 
> The killer feature for templates to work is that the implementation
> should, right after you have named your newly created file, launch an
> editing application so you can edit the file.  Thus, the user is hinted
> and can know that creating a new file entails working on it.
> 
> Hope it helps productivity around the world.

What happens is, you click on Create Document -> Appartment Schedule.
You get a new gnumeric file, selected and with rename enabled. You give
it the right name, double click on it and start filling it out. No need
to learn any new concepts or tools. Creation, editing and management of
templates is all done the same way you are used to. It just works.

> > Templates are user-owned, and shouldn't be touched by any app or distro.
> > At the most, a sysadmin might add some default Templates to /etc/skel
> > for his site, but if the user deletes these (and its his full right to!)
> > he can. 
> 
> Alex, we still need to mind the needs of the distributors and OEMs and
> vendors to supply templates, for the Linux and GNOME desktop to succeed
> as a platform.  If I install OpenOffice, I should reasonably expect to
> have a reasonable set of templates for OpenOffice documents installed,
> and available to all my users without further action on my part, and
> *without* the install program copying it on every user's $HOME (because
> we already established that copying them to /etc/skel would do no good
> for already-existing users).

Manuel, I firmly believe that we do not need that (and you sprout a lot
of "should" and "need" words for what is really your opinion, and not
some general "truth"). I think the kind of generic empty file-type
templates availible in other systems are useless, and I haven't seen
anyone use them as they exist in e.g. windows. They are just a duplicate
way of doing things you can do in another way, cluttering up the UI and
the mental model of the system.

No doubt OpenOffice will ship with a metric shitload of templates, which
can be nice when you're fooling around with some new type of document
you need to write. Though I doubt any of them are really what you want,
they might be a good start for your own template. However, having all
those templates always in the template menu in the file manager would
instantly make the templates menu much less usefull, since you will have
a hard time locating what you want (if its there at all). For the menu
to be useful, it has to contain only the templates you really use, and
organized in a way you are comfortable with (i.e. you organized it
yourself, or someone very close in your organization did it).

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a bookish coffee-fuelled photographer from the 'hood. She's a hard-bitten 
paranoid mermaid with an evil twin sister. They fight crime!