Start new session...

Thomas Zander zander at planescape.com
Wed Oct 9 19:36:48 BST 2002


On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 07:29:50PM +0200, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 10:54:06AM +0200, Thomas Zander wrote:

> > - the distinction between session management and your feature should
> >   be obvious to users.
> > 
> granted.
> 
> so the only short-time solution ... is adding this continue/cancel message
> box with roughly this text (improvements welcome):
>

Ok, since I seem to be the only one who thinks that usability is more 
important then features, I'll make the best of it.
 
> A new X-Server is going to be started on another virtual terminal (vt).
> This won't affect your current session, but instead you (or somebody
> else) will be able to login in parallel. You can switch among the
> active sessions by pressing <alt>-<ctrl>-<F<n>>, where <n> is the number
> of the vt, usually 7 and greater.
> Warning: some broken video drivers tend to crash the machine when
> several X-Servers are running in parallel.

This is far too technical. Many terms are unknown to the target audience.
- X-server -> screen
- virtual terminal -> screen
- session is plainly wrong since that is the other feature we allready had.
  and the reason I have problems with this.
  Lets make it; screen :)
- video driver -> machines/configurations


<b>You have chosen to create a new screen instead of resuming an allready
existing one.</b><br>
You will get a new screen for your login, while another screen is allready
running. You can switch between these screens using the key combination;
CTRL-ALT-Fn, pressing all three keys at the same time. The Fn is the F-key 
where F7 is normally the first, and F8 the second.<br>
<b>Warning</b>: on some machines running multiple screens can crash the
machine.

Idea; put the F7 and F8 as 'args' in the i18n string so distros can change
the output while not effecting translations.


When pressing 'shutdown' in kdm, is there a message?

What happens when I login, can I then select 'sessions' ?
(yes I'll install kdm soonish)

> > And I don't believe you can fix all of those points. Please prove me wrong.
> > 
> yes, we all know that you don't want this feature added at all. but in
> the end (that is, outside the freeze) you're a minority. ;)

IMO the usability for sessions is hard enough to get 'right'. The addition
of a totally different feature that can sanely only be called the same just
makes it an awful lot harder.
But let time tell.

-- 
Thomas Zander   zander at planescape.com
We are what we pretend to be




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