Putting all the head butting aside, I would have to say Marc is correct in one fundamental point: why isn't the help environment more integrated into the application? As an application developer, and thus as a user support participant, I know very well that most problems stem from lack of information to the user more than poor program design. (My education is in cognitive psychology and interface design - so don't assume ignorance in this claim.) Not to say that poor program design is not also a problem. But really, no one sits down and says "How can I freak out the most users? What will elicit the most hostile reactions from the users? To be blunt, how can I be the biggest pain in the ass?" The developers are, in the total absence of a detailed specification from the user (read that a few times - it is a core issue here), surely doing their best. Given that they are often working sans enumeration, how on earth can you complain? But complain we do (drat, I am on that list of complainers when as a developer I should know better...). Instead of bitching at the programmers, perhaps we should address the more general question of how we could improve the situation for everyone. Developers are not evil bastards bent on making a bad experience for the user. I warrant that they are in fact very interested in quite the opposite. When users complain I suspect the developers are unhappy. What is missing is an infrastructure that developers can include in their applications that facilitates a moderated dialog between them and the users. Of course individual apps have done this. But a 'libc' that facilitates user/developer interaction in a constructive and commonly available way simply does not exist. And as long as there is no easy avenue for dialog, this complaint will persist. So instead of bitching at the obviously evil developers with hearts of pure evil, perhaps a more constructive approach might be to see how the developers can best keep abreast of the undefined and surely constantly shifting demands of the users. So, users, what do you suggest? And here is the rub: suggest something concrete and that puts some of the responsibility on you to invent a way to clearly define what some widget should do. After all, to complain that some unpaid coder did not implement some undefined (by the user) functionality is lame at best. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 SHAW'S PRINCIPAL Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org