Science category in the menu

[Frans Englich]

On Tuesday 03 February 2004 14:59, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
> On February 3, 2004 02:47 am, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> > On Monday 02 February 2004 23:53, Frans Englich wrote:
> > > So, we add it to be able to have Science(while not being education)
> > > apps in the menu. Or, we add it to pollute KDE with confused ideas.
> >
> > Or you blow up the menu in adding a toplevel menu for two apps ;(
> >
> > Greetings, Stephan
>
> The best would be for those to apps to be in Edutainment, Kst certainly
> fits in (we can even change the term Edutainment if it's not wide enough)
> and we can also change the sub-categories or add a new one.

The menu spec mentions tons of categories but when having menus for every 
category(exaggerating) usability is degraded. Menus are our method to 
categorize so the user find the relevant application faster, but when the 
menus are too many and have too little content inside the overhead becomes 
too big and it is better to do a more shallow categorization. For example, 
having Science/Geology is a bad thing because there will most likely only be 
one geology app, and in total perhaps 4 science app(wild guesses) - an extra 
menu is a degradation, it adds too much overhead. 
Having Science in Education is bad because people will not have Science apps 
while having Education apps and thus they have to navigate in one extra menu, 
which on top of that is misleading.
> Usually, science applications are considered as educational, like scilab
> for example.

Personally, I think there is or will be scientific apps which are not 
educational. How many these are, is not relevant. See below.
(and when they are both, the Categories field states so)

> Categorizing is never perfect but I would go with putting those apps in
> Edutainment.

If people installed tons of apps we would have to consider how many toplevel  
menus we have, because otherwise it would be crowded(thus bad usability). But 
people don't do that -  education apps are for example installed in schools, 
but not science app. In a lab, a plotting or probing app would be installed 
but not education apps. In these both cases only the relevant top level menus 
are activated, and that's why it doesn't hurt usability, it doesn't become 
crowded. The usage of Science and Education apps will seldom clash - they 
cover separate topics.

> I am open to any idea for remodelling Edu. 
> Now is certainly the best time 
> to do so!

Indeed :) The only thing I think needs corrected is the phrase "Edutainment", 
it's a word game which isn't all that clear, but mostly I /guess/ 
translators(CC'ing) would kill for getting it changed. How about simply 
"Education"? 

Cheers,

		Frans