RE: Win95 users vs. Gnome users - a rant (was Re: Possible gmc bug?)

["Fox, Kevin M" <KMFox mail bhi-erc com>]

> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Michael Rogers wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> > >When I first showed gnome to someone used to another operating system
> > >(this was back at the 0.30 stage) one of the first things they said 
> > >was where is my C: drive and my A: drive. (OK so this is a vulgar 
> > >DOSism but its so embedded into the average users psyche you have to 
> > >account for it)
> > 
> >  I don't think Gnome should pander to Win95 users by making the 
> > interface "easy to learn for the average newbie coming from Win95". 
> > "Easy to learn" is enough. Hopefully in the near future some users 
> > will come to Gnome as their first experience of computers. It would 
> > be a shame if they found it imitating Windows.
> > 
> >  There are good points about the Win95 interface, but some of them 
> > (like the C: drive existing within "My Computer", which exists within 
> > "Desktop", which exists within "C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP", which exists 
> > within the C: drive...) are confusing and stupid. Personally I prefer 
> > the Unix method of having a unified filesystem which starts at /. 
> > This may also be a lie for the sake of convenience, but at least it's 
> > a consistent one.
> 
> That's not what I said and not where my gnome inductee was coming from
> either - they used DOS/win3.11, thats where the C: drive, A: drive
> instinct comes from. The win95 loop you described confuses 3.11 users at
> first. What I was trying to point out (badly perhaps) is look how far
> gnome has come - when I show the latest gnome to people the floppy. cdrom,
> etc are right there and easy to use. But....
> 
> > >Also one of the hard things for newbies to learn is the filesystem,
> > >mounting, unmounting, etc. Now that is almost history with the 
> > >newest gmc - right there on the desktop is a floppy disk icon (for 
> > >example), and I can just double click right into it. However when I 
> > >go to save stuff in gnumeric (for example) I have to go hunting for 
> > >where the floppy is mounted - ok so usually it's in /mnt/floppy but 
> > >it might not be mounted, and a newbie isn't necessarily going to 
> > >know where to look.
> > 
> >  They will have to learn some time, because sooner or later every 
> > user will need to use either the command line or a non-Gnome 
> > application. I'm in favour of attracting new users to Gnome by making 
> > it user-friendly, but I believe that if you put too many layers of 
> > nice, considerate front end between the user and what's really going 
> > on, you ultimately confuse them when they try move beyond the basic 
> > day-to-day point and click operations. Instead of dumbing the user 
> > interface down, provide documentation to let the new user know what's 
> > actually going on. Let them learn something, it won't kill them.
> 
> I agree theres a (fine?) line between making things easy and treating
> users like idiots. 
> 
> > >So my idea is this; would it be possible to put a <Desktop> entry in 
> > >the drop down path menu of the open/save dialog then it would be 
> > >easy to find the floppy, zip, etc (this isn't original I just copied 
> > >this from the mac - anyone who didn't know that go to the back of 
> > >the class). 
> > 
> > (Oops - going to the back of the class.)
> > 
> > This is a trivial problem. On my system it's easy to find the floppy 
> > because it's mounted at /floppy. The cdrom is mounted at /cdrom. You 
> > don't need to change the file dialog, just mount your devices in an 
> > intuitive place.
> 
> Yes, on YOUR system (and on mine too) but stock RH behaviour puts it in
> /mnt/floppy and who know knows where other (possibly shared) devices on
> other systems like solaris, etc, might be put.
> 
> > >A variation on this would be to have the desktop, floppy, cdrom, 
> > >zip, etc appear in the drop down path menu - this is win95ish I 
> > >guess so I have my flamesuit ready.
> > 
> >  I don't care if it's Win95ish if it works! However, I don't think 
> > this feature would be a good idea. It imitates one of the worst 
> > features of Windows - giving the user the impression that the root of 
> > the filesystem is the desktop, and that their filesystem exists 
> > within the desktop rather than the other way around. They should 
> > realise that the icons on their desktop are only links to files or 
> > devices which exist elsewhere.
> 
> I don't know I could be wrong but I get the impression the the sysops here
> would rather we thought the desktop (well our home directory at least) is
> the root of the filesystem and that we don't go messing around any lower
> than that, but then we might have the BOFH ;-)
> 
> >  Another problem is that files in the desktop directory would have to 
> > be automatically "dereferenced" by the file selector widget (so that 
> > the floppy drive and not the link to the floppy drive would appear in 
> > the file list). What happens when you want to do something to the 
> > link instead of to the floppy? You can't find it in your file 
> > selector.
> 
> Huh? All I want is an entry in the drop down menu that slaps me in the
> .gnome-desktop directory and lets me follow the
> fd0/cdrom/My_Latest_project/etc links wherever they may go - like like if 
> I did 
>  
> cd .gnome-desktop/fd0
> 
> on the command line. I should get round to learning C so I can code it in
> myself ;-/
> 
> Your argument has peruseded more against my idea than I was previously but
> I'm still lazy enough to like it ;-)
> 
> Paul
> 
	[Fox, Kevin M]  it might be nicer to cd .desktop/fd0 or something...
i still dont like this idea of calling it .gnome-desktop it is ugly to use
from the command line and dosnt promote use from other non gnome programs...


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