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

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 27Apr2002 04:53PM (-0700), Seth Nickell wrote:
> 
> 3) KDE needs such a control-center monstrosity because they have Waaaay
> too many preferences and categories. We have about 15 preference pages,
> each of which is fairly small, most of which do not have tabs. With the
> current number of preference pages I would say categorization of the
> GNOME preferences is almost unnecessary. I plan to do some
> categorization anyway, because I expect the number of items to grow.

Dude, with 15 items the hierarchy hurts more than it helps. With that
few items, the easiest way to find something is to have a list of all
the items at once. I would say with that few items, there is even room
for growth before imposing hierarchy has a net benefit.

In your categories below, for example, how would I know to look for
Accessibility in "Personal" rather than "Desktop"? Or vice versa for
Font? All preferences are personal to some degree, that's why they're
called preferences.

> My current thinking is something like
> 
> Appearance
>           ->Background
>           ->Font
>           ->Theme (don't like this name, but its the word du jour)
>           ->Toolbars & Menus
> Desktop
>           ->File Manager
>           ->File types
>           ->Keyboard Shortcuts
>           ->Panel
> Hardware (or "Devices" or perhaps something else, need to think)
>           ->Camera
>           ->Joystick
>           ->Keyboard
>           ->Mouse
>           ->Printer
>           ->Scanner
>           ->Sound
> Personal  ->Accesibility
>           ->Language
>           ->User Information (not the right phrase)
> 
> The rule of thumb is that none of these should require administrator
> priviledges, and none of them should be "dangerous" or possible to get
> wrong.