[RFC] "Documents Folder" icon in "system:/"

[James Richard Tyrer]

David Johnson wrote:
> On Wednesday 17 August 2005 10:06 am, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>Yes, but ... (tm) it is newbies that defaults should be designed for
>>>>since they will not start changing defaults as soon as they first
>>>>login. When they are no longer newbies, they can change settings to
>>>>suit their needs.
>>>
>>>It is this philosophy which I have a problem with. Why must the
>>>newbie be catered to? Why does the desktop design have to revolve
>>>around them?
>>
>>I thought that what I said was almost a tautology.
> 
> 
> I think that's my problem right there. I don't view it as a tautology, 
> but some arbitrary decision that Windows newbies are more important and 
> deserving than everyone else.

The tautology is that newbies are by definition not going to be able to
immediately change the defaults to suit their needs.  That is the logic
of the position that requires that defaults be made to suit newbies.

> Go buy a bicycle. Are if you don't have enough money, simply go down to 
> the bicycle shop and examine a bicycle for sale. Does it have training 
> wheels? No! Those are sold separately. The default bicycle does not 
> have training wheels.

This is an invalid analogy because people who are unable to ride a
bicycle *are* able to install training wheels or to pay the bicycle shop
to install them.  It isn't this way with computers and OSes.

Actually, some of the bicycles which are intended for first time riders 
do have training wheels installed.  They are easily removed by those 
that don't need them.  With KDE, we have only one model for everybody, 
so again the analogy doesn't hold.

> I don't want KDE to be a tricycle.
> 
I don't either, but I don't want it to be unfriendly to first time users
either.
> 
>>[Even snipped it out. :-|]
> 
> Which is because I didn't have a Mac handy to verify the exact behavior.
> 
I presume that you have now had the chance to check this and have found
that the Mac OS/X does not put user files in HOME by default either.

So do we agree that although the Mac OS/X and Windows do the user files
folders differently that neither of them place such files in HOME by
default?

-- 
JRT