Use of library names (Akonadi, Solid, Nepomuk, Phonon etc.) in user interfaces

[Randy Kramer]

I thought about sending this response off list for various reasons, then I 
decided to just send it.

Michael,

I take some offense at the way you describe power users, because at least at 
one time (back in my dos/Windows days, almost 10 years ago now), I and 
others, afaic(ould)t) considered me a power user--it was more (imho) because 
I had enough knowledge of various applications, utilities, programming 
languages, etc., to make a computer do almost exactly what I or someone else 
wanted.  

I guess the offensive part is the "I want to make a cool texture to put on my 
mesh", I guess I don't quite understand what you mean by a function driven 
need.

Below, I ramble in a little more detail about the same point.  

Do you really want to describe power users the way you've described them?

regards,
Randy Kramer

On Sunday 08 June 2008 05:59 am, Michael O'Shea wrote:
> Now there *are* different types of users :
> - casual users
> - power users
> 
> *Any disagreements between users and s/w developers or developers between
> themselves come purely from a disagreement on which angle to take on the
> casual/power user divide.
> *
> The two types have two different needs:
> - the casual user has simple, task-driven needs ("I just want to download a
> picture from my camera, rotate it and print it")
> - the power user has a function-driven need ("I want to make a cool texture
> to put on my mesh")

I don't disagree with most of what you say--maybe I haven't read it as 
carefully as I might need to to decide whether I disagree or not.

I do sort of resent the description of power users you present above--that may 
be my problem--but I decided to offer this feedback anyway.

I think I've had the reputation (among others, especially back in my 
Dos/Windows day (almost 10 years ago now)) of being a power user, because 
(maybe among other things) I was aware of and able to use a variety of tools 
(applications, utilities, programming languages), with which I could make the 
computer do almost exactly what I (or someone else) wanted it to do.

I'd like to describe some of what I currently want to do (and am still having 
a hard time doing in Linux, although part of that may be because I am older 
and have more difficulty learning new things--e.g., maybe I haven't yet found 
the right tools in Linux, and maybe, in some cases, new tools have been 
created more recently that I haven't found yet).

In the dos\Windows world, probably the two tools I used most in my everyday 
work were Word (eventually for Windows, but almost since the beginning using 
its collapsible outlining tools (some similarities to folding in Linux)) and 
askSam (for entering and then re-finding almost any kind of information 
(including pictures, snippets of spreadsheets, ...) in basically a 
free-format (mostly) plain text form).  (Visio, ZyIndex, and a spreadsheet 
were also important, but used a little less often by me.)

A big part of my quest in attempting to and actually switching to use Linux 
almost exclusively has been to find reasonable workalikes for Word (with 
collapsible outlining) and askSam.  I'm sure to (some) others that makes me 
seem pretty particular, which might translate to your (unflattering, imho) 
definition of a power user.

In many ways, I'd like to be, at least most of the time, considered a casual 
user--I'd like to have applications that work close enough to the way I'm 
used to using collapsible outlining in Word and the data entry and retrieval 
features of askSam to minimize my relearning and generally make me happy.

(Now, I guess I should admit that some things have changed in the external 
environment in the time since I stopped using Windows--notably, back in those 
days, my primary work product was reduced to paper form.  Now more of my work 
product is produced in electronic form, either emails, webpages, or just 
documents that may never be printed, but, then again, that doesn't really 
make that much difference to the point of my comments here.)

So, I suspect that you would consider me a power user in the unflattering 
sense you define a power user.