idea: kpersonalizer to ask for user 'type'

[George Staikos]

On Wednesday 18 February 2004 09:34, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > n) customize
>
> we have KPersonalizer that does much of this. but extending it to
> per-application and per-configuration panel settings doesn't work for all
> the reasons people have cited.

   I have not heard reasons against direct questions, only indirect questions 
such as "home user", which is ambiguous and basically ultimately meaningless.

> maybe if we keep moving this conversation to different email lists we'll
> eventually find support for the idea of user levels.. hmmmm...

  Not trying to move anything... I'm not on any of these other lists you might 
suggest this discussion was on.

> >    You don't categorize the user, you let the user choose.  Remember that
> > KDE as we provide it is not KDE as is shipped to end users with their
> > distro anyway.  The people who use "our" KDE are people compiling with
> > CVS or source packages.  They are capable of basic decisions.  Distros
> > will customize as they see fit.
>
> the "distros will customize" argument is IMHO just an excuse, and it works
> against creating a solid KDE brand which is not good for our users and not
> good for the project.

  Not that "they will" but that "they do, and will continue to do".  
Targetting KDE out of the box to users that we don't have at the expense of 
users we do have is dumb, and expecting that the users we don't have but will 
come through distros (like Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros, and perhaps more 
end-user targetted SuSE, Mandrake, etc) will ever even know if we add or 
remove icons is rather far-fetched.  No matter what we do, they will change 
it.  That's how they create their brand.  If you are doing this to create a 
brand as opposed to creating a solid desktop for the userbase, then you 
should be creating a "distro" instead.  KDE provides all the right tools for 
doing this.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/