My ideas for the gnome UI

["Tom Musgrove" <TomM pentstar com>]

Greetings, these are various ideas I've had for the gnome UI.  Many of these
ideas have been previously posted to other lists due to my lack of awareness
of this list.  Here it goes...

First there are two projects that I would like to implement, which are
briefly described below

The first, is to see about having a survey and feature request system set up
for all of the Linux desktops.  All wish list items for any programs are
aggregated, and then users can vote on which potential features they would
really like.  Demographic info could also be gathered (thus if a group were
interested in targeting a specific market, they could focus on the features
important to that market, since different segments have different needs.)  I
think that there are many really great feature ideas just waiting to be
heard and implemented.  If a way is set up to actively solicit feature
ideas, as well as peoples desire to see those features implemented, I expect
that we can seriously accelerate the pace of free software innovation, and
capture market share from the non-Free alternatives.

The second project is similar, but focused on increasing developer
participation. I'd like to set up a project that makes it easy for those
with limited time and/or skills to contribute.  The idea is a survey that
requests the following information -  what are your skills, what are your
time constraints, what types of projects are you interested in participating
in, etc.  Free projects could post their todo lists with (hopefully)
estimates of time and skills required, as well as a deadline needed by (if
any).  The projects matching the developers requests (based on skill,
interests, and time constraints.)  If one of the todos was something that
developer (or whatever other skill)  wanted to do, and had time for, they
would email back their acceptance along with directions to relevant
documentation, contact people to ask if they needed help, and deadline to
submit a completed (in whole or part) product by.  Upon completion, the
developer could be rated on timeliness and skill, thus good developers would
be recognized for their value.  Those with poor timeliness ratings would not
be delegated important tasks in future projects, thus reducing potential
'weak links'.  This should provide a path for maximal participation and
minimal commitment of personal time and resources as well as providing
prestige, accountability, and feedback.

It would be really nice if these were designed so that GNOME, KDE, and non
affiliated projects could utilize the above tools, although my primary
interest is for GNOME.

Okay, now for more general feature request...

These are some of the features that I have suggested for Evolution and/or
Nautilus that are probably valuable to just about all of the Gnome projects

Help Features

Feature: Help is linked to IRC, thus if a search term/phrase is not found
one can go to the appropriate IRC channel, and the previous queries can be
sent - the IRC person responds, and the queries are linked to the
appropriate answer (if it already exists) or the answer is added to the
help.  Thus the next time the help is updated if someone asks a similar
question they will find the correct answer.  Note that the Searching
features above would greatly improve the power of the help...

Feature: Include system information when submitting help - when a help
request is submitted, environmental information can be automatically
included such as what is currently running, as well as libraries and such
that are installed.

Feature: Visually directed help - the help dialog could be closed (click a
'show me how button?'), and the next location to click to complete the
'help' action requested would be highlighted/have a dialog explaining what
to do next to it ('now enter bar text in field foo').

Feature: Spoken help - the help would be spoken instead of having to be
read - preferably with the user to be able to give feedback vocally, as well
as through their actions with the mouse and keyboard

Feature: Actions translated to help - a scripting that translates a users
actions into a help to be played back in one of the above methods (or as a
standard help description)

Feature: Screen shot for help - a automatic screenshot of the
desktop/dialogues, etc. can be included at the users option when submitting
a help to the IRC person

Other Features

Feature: Application usage history - a program to track the usage of
programs that are used, as well as when applications crash.  (Maybe should
be added to the help stuff above...)

Feature: Feature/command usage history (with analysis)- an ability to track
the usage of commands and repetitive tasks in various applications.  Thus if
a task is done a great deal, a keyboard shortcut can be suggested, or a
suggestion on how to script the task can be suggested.  Also, if the user
desires, they can send the history to developers, so that command sequence
that are generally repeated can be analyzed and a common shortcut can be
created.  This could also be useful for agencies such as governments to
discover what tasks ought to be automated.  (additionally, time information
on task switching could be included to give potential time savings of a
macro versus using mouse or key combinations...)

Feature: Command Line Widget - advanced users could have a single input line
(with possibly a two line display) for quick entry of script and shell
commands (similar to what is used in irc clients...)- or it could be similar
to Vi/Emacs command mode

Feature: Interviewer - subjects could be interviewed as to their previous
experience in other OSes/popular programs, so that training and help/hints
could be focused on where they don't have experience, or the default set of
key bindings could be set to mimic the other environments key bindings, or
even the application UI could configure itself to the other environments
defaults. (thus rapidly reducing the learning curve and retraining costs)

Feature: Command Summary Cards - a quick summary of the commands and
features available  (similar to the laminated cards available for courses
and some software programs...)

Feature: Split folders - instead of spawning a new folder, a folder can be
spawned in the same window, but splitting the view so that there is now two
folder lists


Feature: Environmental Diff - If you desire to download new software, a
requirements file is downloaded and a diff is done between the libraries
needed and those available - also diffs for 'nonstandard' compiles, or
config files could be done - vastly simplifying upgrades
Other Features

Searching Features


Feature: abbreviates and or symbols are recognized as words by the search
engine

Feature: Fuzzy Searching - words can be misspelled when entered in the
search (or when saved) and still have a good chance of being found

Feature: Synonym searching - you can search for a word with similar meaning
to yours, so that if different people file the document another person can
find it

Feature: Clustering analysis - finding of similar content for grouping
purposes

Feature: Outlier analysis - Finding rare content for grouping purposes

Feature: Spell checking of file names - documents and files that have
strange spellings can have the option of doing spell checking

Feature: Metadata for files - additional metadata can be added to any file
to enhance searching and filing capabilities

Note the clustering and outlier analysis can be utilized with fuzzy and
synonym for extremely powerful searching

Hope you find some of these worth implementing,

Tom M.
TomM@pentstar.com