Re: [gnome-love] Where to make a policy suggestion?

[Sri Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

So, I"m sort of jumping into this late.  But I haven't read mail in
awhile so I thought I would put in my two cents.  I've read the entire
thread so I got the gist of the conversation.

My feeling about exposing these details is somewhat different. 

I think GUI's by their nature tend to obfuscate detail anyways since
that's the point of a good GUI.  It makes using the computer less
intimidating.  There's always a temptation among power users to want to
interact with their GUI like they would with their command line and it's
a losing battle.  

What we want details for is purely subjective.  You might be interested
in seeing how GNOME decides to burn a CD, but might not care for other
details which might interest someone else.  There's also the added
problem that when you do want to show something like this, you're using
up valuable GUI space that could be used for other aesthetic purposes.

Let's go back to our CD burning example.  If the default software cannot
do what you want from it, I consider that as an opportunity to create
something that could do multiple cd images.  It doesn't all have to be
done by the default software.  Thankfully, we have Linux where you can
fling the GUI out the window, pop up the shell and create your own
solution with standard tools.

People who do have problems that are not scalable with the current
software generally will find out where and how once they have the
motivation.  If not, they get to pay some dude to do it for them.  I"ve
seen this happen hundreds of times.  The grapevine becomes alive.   We
don't see it now because Linux desktops haven't hit critical mass but
it's getting there.

sri

ps I'm somewhat tired, so I hope I made sense here.

On Tue, 2006-03-14 at 14:24 -0600, David Berg wrote:
> -- I think I answered my own question by the time I finished the
> e-mail so if you don't want to hear my idea, just send me to
> /dev/null.
>
> First a quick hello.  I've tried gnome on numberous occasions and have
> always been put off by startup time and "bloat" preferring the simple
> fvwm.  This most recent time with Ubuntu 5.10 and Gnome 2.12 I've
> stuck with it for a couple days now and have tweaked enough
> configuration that I'm comfortable.  Perhaps this time I'm here to
> stay.
>
> The reason I'm writing is a complaint I've had about GUI's in general
> since I started with linux around '99.  They do too good of a job of
> hiding the command line.  They are great in that the make the learning
> curve more gradual and give you an idea of what is possible.  I think
> that they could go a step farther though and do a wonderful job of
> teaching the command line.
>
> So here's the feature request I'd like to file:  The command line that
> is to be run should be visible to the user before it is run.  For
> example if I burn a CD in GnomeBaker, I should see the `cdrecord
> dev=/dev/cdrom image.iso ...` line in a status bar underneath the
> "start" button when I initiate the burn.
>
> Where and when a command line should be stuck would probably vary by
> application but I would like to see it become part of Gnome's Human
> Interface Guidelines... and I think I've just answered my question.
>
> So I'll step down off my "embrace the command line -- don't hide it
> soap box" and send the suggestion in the appropriate direction.
>
>
> --Dave
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