KIO slaves wizard

[Dawit A.]

On Sunday 07 November 2004 19:13, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Sunday 07 November 2004 03:03, Dawit A. wrote:
> > From my perspective the problem with this proposal is that it completely
> > ignores the fact that network transparency is almost always a power user
> > feature.
>
> and yet i constantly come across people who are above average to true power
> users who are blithely unaware of our ioslaves.

I am sure these people can easily be handled with the documentation method I 
suggested. Above average users should have little trouble comprehending 
things that are explained to them.

> for one, all our slaves are lumped together in one big family. kio_smtp is
> given the same billing as irc6 as is fish. this makes no sense from an HCI
> perspective. it represents their implementation, not their meaningfulness
> to the user.

Right... They were not designed with an end user interface in mind. They were 
designed to make developers life easier. Exposing such things to end users 
require some careful thinking and none of the suggestions I have seen so far, 
including the original one that started this thread, come close to dealing 
with the issue without introducing their own can of worms. Hence, a tutorial 
that explains the usage of all the essential io-slaves with examples would 
IMHO be a good first step towards exposing the "above average" and/or "power" 
users to these capabilities.

> furthermore, we almost never make it explicit in our interfaces that these
> things are available to the user! even with documentation, they have to
> remember and identify which interface elements can be used to access io
> slaves.

I do not know how you can easily make it explicit in the interface (through 
whatthis help ?)... Regarding documentation I personally can tell you that I 
do not remember all the functions in any API since I work with so many. 
However, I know where to go get the appropriate documentation. That is what 
needs to be brought forth to these users. I am sure they then will have no 
problem with finding it whenever they need it...

> this is not a power user versus new user issue. i doubt most basic users
> will have a need to explicitly use most of our ioslaves; but i do know that
> many people who can and should be using them are unaware of how to do so or
> ill-equipped to do so. this is the aspect of the problem that needs to be
> addressed, since even power users deserve and even require usable
> interfaces.

I completely agree with this statement, but we still have to take some kind of 
first step towards solving this issue. And to me the easiest way to 
accomplish that is what I suggested. George already started it with his 
tutorial. What needs to be done now is to expand upon that and make sure that 
information is available somewhere where end users can easily get to it. BTW, 
I am sure it won't come as a surprise to you when I say that there are many 
features in KDE which users do not know about but could benefit from if they 
did...


-- 
Regards,
Dawit A.
"Preach what you practice, practice what you preach"