Gnome Article on UI Design on /.

[Ralf Nolden]

On Sonntag, 21. April 2002 20:29, Shawn Gordon wrote:

> I know I didn't answer anything here, but rather raised more questions,
> which have likely been considered, but my opinion is that the goals for KDE
> 3.1 and beyond need to be thought out a bit more.
>
> Shawn

My words: think about working with other people on *one* promising application 
for one task instead of writing another one and moving it into 
kdebase/network/multimedia.

As far as distro's go: My view is that what we provide by our code, that is 
what we can directly influence. If a distro thinks those and those apps on 
apps.kde.com/fm etc. are good for the user and the system and they include 
it, fine (this is where SuSE, Mandrake etc. are better than Lycoris because 
these programs are on the CD's and you *can* install them without a problem. 
Wether those get installed by default or not is another question). What I 
mean by "KDE Distribution" is barely what gets shipped in the tarball that 
goes to the packagers on a KDE release. SuSE only customizes those with a new 
distribution that comes out, KDE releases get packaged (more or less) like 
they are. 

So, bottom line is what I think should be done (emphazize on *think* not 
recommend or anything else, I just want to contribute to the discussion) is:
- don't run kappfinder automatically but let the user do it. A graphical 
rewrite that would check for the programs and lists them in a window with 
checkboxes where the user could choose: "yes, add this (editor, player, 
terminal-emulator etc) to the K Menu" would allow the user to take control 
over kappfinder a lot more than it is since the KDE 1.x days when you had to 
run it to fill up the K menu with some apps where KDE didn't have one by 
itself (still this situation with Gimp for example). This leaves the K menu a 
lot cleaner by a default compile and installation.

- the editors: remove kedit as already discussed. It doesn't share any good 
code and kwrite is a good substitute as it is already used as a fileviewer 
part in konqueror. 

- the CD burning apps developers: please organize yourself in an IRC meeting 
and discuss pro's and con's, get into one team and write the best CD burning 
app ever that is following the KDE style guidelines, easy and intuitive to 
use for normal tasks like backups or burning CD images. Add audio-cd-burning, 
dvd burning etc, whatever is possible so it gets usable for simple and 
complex tasks. Also things like dragging a folder from Konqueror to a 
CD-burner Icon on the desktop (e.g. with a CD-RW) should be possible so the 
context menu offers to copy the folder on the CD by burning it.

(again: no insulting intended but flames requested)

Ralf

-- 
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden at kde.org

The K Desktop Environment       The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org              http://www.kdevelop.org