Fwd: Re: Application duplication (was: Re: cdbakeoven)

[Waldo Bastian]

On Saturday 20 April 2002 07:02 am, Carsten Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Saturday 20 April 2002 15:48, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > > I disagree, all we'd need to do is change the K-Menu to be
> > > task-oriented instead of showing applications. E.g. "Edit file" instead
> > > of a list of editors to choose from. Yes, that should probably easily
> > > switchable, so you can choose the editor instead of launching the
> > > default editor.
> >
> > Hmm?  Using the K menu is for starting applications. I am not quite sure
>
> Why? You start applications to perform a task, right? So why explicitly
> start "kwrite" when you can "Edit a file"?
>
> > what that has to do with documents which are opened from konqueror.  The
> > document based approuch is fully implemented in konq; using mime you
> > always have the same editor when you click on a certain filetype.
>
> Yes, but if everybody used Konqueror that way, we wouldn't need a
> filedialog.

It was my conclusion about 2 years ago (while I was busy with the styleguide) 
that KDE should support both task-oriented and application-oriented ways of 
working.

This becomes more clear when you take a look at your (my) kitchen. My kitchen 
is full with tools (applications) such as an oven, a bread-machine, 
microwave, a mixer, knives... etc. etc. Sometimes you work task-oriented 
(e.g. when I want to make bread I just use the bread-machine, it makes the 
dough and does the baking), sometimes more application oriented (to bake a 
pizza I use the oven and when the pizza is finished and the oven is still hot 
I put in some cookies) and sometimes a combination of both. (When I make 
pizza myself I make the dough in the bread-machine, role the dough out on the 
counter, put stuff on it and bake it in the oven.)

So while it can be worthwhile to offer task-oriented solutions (the 
breadmachine is great for making bread), task-oriented solutions should not 
be the only game in town because it doesn't work that way. If only because it 
is simply not possible to offer all possible tasks a user would want to do 
(Where is the "Create new CVS account on KDE server" option?)

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org  |   SuSE Labs KDE Developer  |  bastian at suse.com