Re: Printer driver UI [proposal]

[Robert L Krawitz <rlk alum mit edu>]

   Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 10:44:59 +0100
   From: Michael Goffioul <goffioul imec be>

   >    A number of people in the printing community have identified the
   >    need to improve the user experience in this particular area that
   >    you are describing. The main issue I see with your proposal is that
   >    you are trying to describe how the UI is going to be layed out by
   >    the GUI application, I don't think we want to do that but rather
   >    provide the information to the GUI level so that it can make smart
   >    decisions as how best to layout the interface.

   The ideal case from a user's point of view is to have a similar GUI
   whatever the app you're using: gnumeric, kword, galeon,
   konqueror...  The style will be slightly different, but the widget
   layout should stay quite similar such that the user doesn't have to
   find its way in each application. That's why I proposed to
   standardize the layout description in a common format we agree on.

The problem here is that different environments may have different
style guides, and that anything like this is sure to be wrong in
somebody's book.  Somebody using KDE is likely to expect a certain
layout, while a GNOME user may expect something entirely different,
and an OS X user something else altogether.  It would 

   As you see, I'm talking about tiny things that an expert Linux
   user probably finds completely useless, but IMO can contribute
   to the user-friendlyness of Linux for the desktop. And maybe if
   we can agree on a solution, printer manufacturers will start to
   provide their own UI description.

Then we'll have inconsistencies between the UI descriptions provided
by printer vendors, as they seek to lock in users.

Anyway, until GNOME and KDE fully agree upon a standard look and feel
(which I hope never entirely happens -- the competition and diversity
are only good in the long run), there won't be any high level
agreement on the details.  So IMHO it would make more sense for the
description to specify the semantics of the controls, rather than the
UI layout.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk alum mit edu>      

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf uunet uu net
Project lead for Gimp Print   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton