[Kde-pim] Re: hide backends, talk about frontends not applications (branding "Kontact")

[Anne Wilson]

On Monday 22 Nov 2010 10:52:03 Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> Anne,
> 
> Am Freitag, 19. November 2010 19:56:16 schrieb Anne Wilson:
> > On Friday 12 Nov 2010 11:03:20 Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > > My suggestion would mean to not have "KMail" or "KAdressbook" anymore.
> > > Also no single "application" for this, but just "frontends" and "views"
> > > on "Kontact".
> > 
> > Age is truly catching up on me, but maybe that means that I also
> > represent a large group of users. The kind of naming in promotion that
> > we see now is hugely confusing.
> 
> the more I am thankful for all voices. I know it is a bit confusing,
> this is why I believe we should come up with something at least a little
> bit more consistent. To me there are at least three different groups in
> communication, which of course talk to each other so they are overlapping:
> 
> 1 where you have coordinator, core developers
> 2 where you have contributors and power users
> 3 users
> 
> [Grouped after 4.1 participant structure of
> http://gpg4win.de/ShortStudy-Sustainable-FS-example-Gpg4win.html ]
> 
> Communication will change within each group. This list for example
> mainly has groups 1 and 2 I'd say.
> 
> Group 1 will have to talk about code and history, so they still will have
> KMail or KOrganizer around, just because this is the legacy still being in
> there. For them, nothing will change, just talk code for this purpose.
> They all know what the refactoring brought us, no need to use terms for
> them.
> 
> Group 2 will have to understand what the current refactoring brought them
> and what the difference between "Kontact Mail" and "KMail" is.
> They might hear about Akonadi and Resources, when they work up to pyramid
> and seek more knowledge. For them we would need the "views" and "services"
> meta explanation.
> 
> > The truth is that Kontact is still a Personal
> > Information Manager, and people still need their Mail, Addressbook,
> > Diary/Calendar and Task List - simple terms that they understand.  Views
> > mean nothing to me in this context.  They are not different ways of
> > looking at the same data.  They are interlinked sets of data, which is
> > quite different, in my mind at least.
> 
> For group 3 I believe you are right, but for group 2 I think we need
> to explain the relation of two started "Mail" frontends and a plasmoid to
> the "backend".
> 
> > Please don't get too abstract - it's not necessary.  The product is good
> > enough to stand on its own feet, without hype like this.
> 
> I dislike hype. I have seen many people from group 2 not understanding what
> has been happening and tech journalists who usually should bridge the gap
> between groups 2 and 3 also fail at explaining it adequately.
> No hype, but a fitting, simple, explanatory set of words would be nice.
> 
Actually, there is another, related problem.  Group 1 are generally in 
constant contact with the changes, so should have little or no problem.  For 
Group 3 I do my best to give clear user-centric information.  Group 2, though, 
includes what may come under your "power users" heading - people who are 
regular users that want to understand more about how things are organised and 
work.  They find it difficult to get the information they want, and I'm often 
worried that my knowledge isn't good enough to guide them, particularly in a 
fast-changing environment.

What I would dearly love to see is someone from the kde-pim team being willing 
to work with me on irc and referencing userbase for perhaps an hour a month, 
so that we can write pages for this group.  Since I'm retired, apart from 
family requirements I can be pretty flexible as to when this is done.  Would 
anyone be willing to join me?  It doesn't have to be the same person every 
month - we could pick a topic to suit.

Anne
-- 
KDE Community Working Group
New to KDE Software? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-pim/attachments/20101122/41f3e739/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
KDE PIM mailing list kde-pim at kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/