Re: [Usability] (no subject)

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

Please, please, please use the subject line.*

It is a big help if people summarise what they are trying to say in the
subject line.  Better questions get a better response and people are more
likely to put a little extra time and effort into their reply if the
question is thoughtful and shows some effort has been made to
answer their own question.

My response follows below, interspersed through your message.

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Hynek Hanke wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:07:01 +0200
> From: Hynek Hanke <hanke brailcom org>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] (no subject)
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> for me, the classical ``background'' of my Gnome desktop (some inactive
> image + a few icons on top of it) is something quite old and not really
> working well in how I use computers today. In their present form , I
> don't use desktop icons at all. But I have no idea about better
> solutions for an ordinary user.
>
> However, what *I* would like to do, is to use the background as a
> terminal.

I know it is possibly to set just about anything as the background
including screensavers or live video.  As far as I know this approach
would not be suitable for something interactive like a terminal.  If you
ask you local gurus (Linux user group) and people who are interested in
tweaking and customising everything they might be able to give you more
information about that approach.

I expect what you seek is possible and in fact may already be possible but
this list is probably not the best place to find specific answers about
how to implement it.

For what it is worth I dont use the desktop icons much either but I do
have quite a lot of icons on my panel instead.  I also have at least one
terminal open** almost all the time which is a painful reminder of how I
eventually gave in and learned how to use the command line.  It serves as
a constant reminder of all the things I cannot easily do using the Desktop
Enviroment and there is a whole lot we can do to make things more user
friendly.

> That would really very much improve the Gnome usability for me (and
> maybe that's the case of other power users too, I don't know). I keep
> launching gnome-terminal all the time for every silly thing, that's
> annoying.

I mostly use the Run dialog for this sort of thing but I never did
memorise the keybinding (I just know it isn't WindowsKey+R) you might like
the mini commander Panel Applet.

> And when I have it as a window, it gets in the way while doing
> other things, so I shut it down again. Only to need to launch it again
> in a while...

I think we have serious problems if a user feels the need to resort to the
command line on a regular basis.  I firmly believe a Desktop has failed if
you need to use the command line for ordinary use.  I am willing to wait
for the future when we can easily automate and script mundane tasks which
I hope would exclude many of your problems.  Things should be at
least possible to do without the terminal and we can then gradually look
at making them more efficient and finding ways to streamline the workflow.

Perhaps you could give us an idea of which tasks you find yourself
resorting to the command line for and perhaps we can identify ways to
improve some of them to benefit all users?

> Please, do you have any ideas how can I solve these three issues?

Sorry I'm no use on the implementation but perhaps with my comment about
running video or a screensaver as a background you will be able to more
easily find relevant information.

> I'm no experienced Gnome user, so excuse me if this sounds too dumb.

I don't believe in it being dumb to ask questions and you did a good job
of making it clear what you meant.

> I could easily launch apps from command line,

I think the minicommander panel applet might be a whole lot easier to meet
this requirement

> I could use gnome in the same powerful way as I use the console, no need
> to use mouse or the not-so-easy-keyboard navigation when I don't want
> to... i would love that :)

I didn't really answer your question but I hope I have helped you get on
the right track and I would appreciate if you could tell us a little more
about the tasks you absolutely need the terminal for so that perhaps we
could improve them in a more general way for people who would really
prefer not to use the terminal (which would be me actually).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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* Okay so you apologised already but I typed it already and it does bother
me a whole lot.

** Always having one terminal open used to be a failsafe so that if
nothing else worked I could get to the terminal and do something about it.
This happens rarely now but I do sometimes find my machine starved of
resources if I open Gnome Help, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and the GIMP all at
the same time.  Stable OS is meaningless in this situation but I'm just
bitching again 'cause I cannot afford modern hardware.
Since I learned to use the command line I now prefer to use it if it will
save me time or allow me to easily automate tedious and repetative tasks
but I'd still prefer a point and click way to do everything.