On Monday 02 August 2010 19:54:01 Otso wrote:
On 02/08/2010, Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> wrote:
On Sunday 01 August 2010 18:20:58 Otso wrote:
Getting at least those three common nominators in order should be enough to create something that appeals for everyone.
Stability is a common element for all target users, but what functionality and discoverability acttually mean depends highly on the target audience. For some people a command line tool with a good man page is perfectly functional and discoverable and a great user interface, for other people a GNOME UI or something else works better.
There are not many absolutes in user interface design and knowing the audience of the interface is an essential prerequisite for doing it well.
-- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de>
Last time I checked (about 5 minutes ago when I opened Konsole for sed), powerful CLI and modern GUI can coexist without any problems. There is absolutely no stepping on advanced users toes if good, easy-to-operate, nice looking and stable GUI with sane defaults is made priority. I used OS X extensively for 2 years 2005-2007, and I was quite happy with it because I could revert to good old *nix command-line wizardy if the GUI couldn't do what I wanted (which was often the case). The existence of pretty GUI didn't interfere with my "powerusing". At all. Using KDE isn't stopping me from doing what I want either, on contrary, having Plasma *not* to crash would be quite helpful.
Arguably, it's much easier for advanced users to cope with a easy-to-use GUI that has nice defaults and great stability, than it is for total newbie to tweak everything out of necessity. Powerusers can and will tweak their systems anyway, so concentrating efforts in satisfying our needs (I assume everyone on this mailing list is a poweruser) is hopeless. We have Yast and CLI tools and know our way around them anyway.
No arguments against it. Still doesn't mean you don't have to make a choice when it comes to where you put your focus. Eg it ain't to crazy to remove all manpages and use slim versions of the GNU tools on a livecd focussing on newbies, while that choice would be ridiculous when aiming for powerusers. And even if you would not have any choices, and powerusers' needs never bump into those of newbies, it helps to make clear who you're focusing on. Be it for attracting developers focused on helping newbies (or powerusers) or simply in your communication towards the users. IOW yes, we must make a choice here. Of course that choice can be to initially optimize for newbies but try not to limit powerusers or anything. It ain't black and white, but there must be a focus SOMEWHERE. If you don't have an agreed-upon strategy, on part of the community can do one thing, the other part the other thing - and thus both will loose out. Of course you could decide upon such a thing, for example: the Gnome team focusses on newbies, the KDE team focuses on powerusers/developers/gamers. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it's clear where the focus lies. Grtz Jos
Take it easy, Otso