Havoc - You're right... let's go beyond the idea of "Quit"... Let's examine the desktop as a whole... You said to me that it's just a plain fact that users don't understand the idea of processes... in a hardcore UNIX sort of way, you're probably right... but I think they have some sort of abstraction... We may not be able to define application, but we certainly have some good examples of them... Look in the GNOME menu under "Applications"... each of these is in fact an application... AbiWord, Evolution, Galeon, Mozilla, OO.o, all of them... And selecting them out of the GNOME menu (the "start" menu in windows-ese) _starts_ the application... Or look elsewhere in the GNOME menu... "Run Program"... What does "Run" mean? What exactly are you running? A window? My Gaim applet's context menu has "Quit" in it... What would "Close" mean in that context? There's no window to close! For other examples, think of the MacOS concept of "Hide" vs. "Quit"... the user has an idea that "Hide" does not end the process... it does not quit the application... the user can pick it right back up where they left off... Quitting an application means "I'm done with this. Put it away" whereas Hide means "I need this out of the way for the moment, but I'm going to come back"... users do have the idea that "Quitting" throws away what you were doing so that when you "Start" the application again, you start from scratch, clean slate... I (and I think Jeffrey and Ettore) don't think that these ideas are lost on users... I don't think they're as abstract as you think... If I've got three AbiWord documents open, I've got a good idea what to expect from "Quit"... it means I don't want to use AbiWord anymore... put it away so I can be done with it... Quitting doesn't refer to the UNIX process... it refers to the human process... You may say that these are just further implementation details to hide... but I think our argument is that the concept of "processes" is not unique to UNIX... they aren't unique to computers... I can "quit" watching TV... I can "quit" reading a book... the concept of "quit" means taking whatever it is you're doing and putting it away, so that when you come back to it, you can start up fresh again... Give users a little more credit... -jag -- --------------------------------------------------------- Joshua Adam Ginsberg Cellphone: 970.749.8530 Rice University '02 Email: joshg myrealbox com St. Mark's School of Texas '98 -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin ---------------------------------------------------------
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part