Re: Preferences [Was: a whole lot of other things, too]

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas urgent rug ac be>]

While in general I agree with what Havoc said, I want to pick on two items 
I really care about :


> I'm especially concerned by things like the HTML capplets which to me
> seem like app prefs moved into a global space; I don't see a
> theoretical bound on the number of prefs dialogs if we start down that
> road. What app pref couldn't theoretically be shared with another
> similar app? Given that most users use only a few apps, are we gaining
> them much benefit by sharing these dialogs? Enough benefit to outweigh
> the cost of the clutter? I'd at least like to limit prefs dialogs like
> this to cases where the pref in question is actually in practice used
> by a number of apps that don't overlap functionally (i.e. sharing
> prefs among all web browsers is useless, users will only be using one
> browser).

This last point I totally don't agree with (users only using one browser).  
I have personally seen at work a few new Linux users, given the option of 
both Mozilla and Galeon, go back and forth.  Haven't asked them why 
though.  In any case, they used both.  Also, as long as I myself 
am not able to make default links go to Galeon instead of Mozilla (from 
apps like gnome-terminal, it drives me crazy), even though I specified
Galeon in Preferences>Advanced>Preferred Applications, I'll be forced to 
use two browsers concurrently as well.

What I *do* think, however, is that it would be great if each of these 
gnome-aware apps would use *the same* configuration app/capplet/bonobo 
control/... to configure all their common settings.

I think you are right in saying there isn't a real need for these settings 
in the preferences menu, but :
a) as long as NO APP CLEARLY WINS FOR A LONG TIME in terms of speed, 
featurecompleteness and usability, IT'S A CLEAR PLUS 
to have more than one app be usable and 
have your defaults change over the course of a year (a year ago, galeon 
wouldn't have been my favourite link opener, but now it wins hands down)

and
b) moving app prefs out of the app and into a shared space for similar 
apps to access CAN ONLY BE A GOOD THING.  I seem to get from your comment 
that you're against it because it clutters up the preferences.  For me 
that is a reason to not put them in preferences but find a better spot.

I'll give you a concrete example : I work with GStreamer, and I expect 
lots of apps coming out soon using GStreamer.  We would like for the 
default audio and video output method to be a preference shared by default 
for all apps.  Apps could give the option of overriding this if need be, 
but by default we want them to use the same.  Then GStreamer can also 
supply the tool to find "the best sink", and all apps can benefit from 
that.

Since I realize not all apps are Gnome, and this wouldn't work for 
Mozilla, I would recommend to have some kind of central app where this 
sort of stuff can still be accessed until this sort of integration works 
across the whole line.
 
> > I don't like "Non-gnome apps (KDE et al)" - basically I think we
> should either merge the KDE apps into the main menus or not display
> them at all. Users don't care about KDE vs. GNOME.

Users might care about the speed hit associated with starting up a KDE app 
when running all Gnome.  If users don't know what Konqueror, Mozilla and 
Galeon are, except that they're browsers, they might pick one at random 
and, for their intents and purposes, pick the one that gives them the 
slowest start-up time.  It's the desktop's job to protect users from 
making these uninformed decisions.
OTOH, sometimes a KDE app is really better than it's equivalent gnome app, 
and it would be a shame to see us not giving that user the chance on 
the BEST possible experience - we need to tell them there are other apps 
out there that we don't really recommend but please run them anyway if you 
think they are better.  I would maybe hide them one level deeper down, 
with a good explanation in the tooltip of what they are - right now "KDE 
Menu" comes below the gnome "Applications", thus being seen first, 
and contains a hell of a lot more stuff at this moment, so I can see how 
users would think that this is really the menu ;)

Thomas

The Dave/Dina Project : future TV today ! - http://davedina.apestaart.org/
<-*-                      -*->
My baby she knows
the weight that I'm under
<-*- thomas apestaart org -*->
URGent, the best radio on the Internet - 24/7 ! - http://urgent.rug.ac.be/