A different point of vision (was: Appearance capplet)

[Luca Ferretti]

Hi everyone,

sorry to start a new thread, but I strongly desire this email will not
missed in previous *cough*flame*cough* discussion.

I've recently started helping a man to use and maintain his computer. He
was a professor of engineering at university, but he had an ictus some
years ago and now he's able to move only his right arm and head. He
recently started to use Linux, and we switched from KDE to GNOME 4 weeks
ago. We could say he's a "virgin of GNOME"[1]. No bias, no strong
interest in GNOME vs KDE vs MacOS vs Win. Just "I want to use this
fuc***ng computer".

Some days ago he asked me how to enlarge the text on screen, so I showed
him the Fonts tab in Appearance preference tool[2]. Then we explored the
other options available in this tool.

In the (infamous and so hated) Interface tab he found really useful the
ability to change the setting for toolbar items, and he chosen to stay
with "text only", saying he prefers to read a label then try to figure
what an icon means.

What's the point of this? Well, firstly report that some people actually
use some "weird" setting, secondly that even if unused, some preferences
are better to stay in a "visible" place then in a not-yet-available
tweak UI or gconf-editor[3]. Someone could need them or, at least, will
appreciate their availability and discoverability.

When that man used the Interface tab to adjust the setting for himself I
was really proud that "my" GNOME Desktop was able to provide something
that was useful. I really hope GNOME we'll be able to keep this level of
user-friendship.

Cheers, Luca.

[1] insert a sexist joke here :P
[2] OT: this should also tell us that font settings are not immediately
discoverable :|
[3] another OT: honestly I've a bad feeling with any sort of tweak tool
in GNOME. We already have gconf-editor for "real" tweaks, adding a GUI
tool to pack options makes me feel we was unable to choose the proper
ones and put them in the proper place :(

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[William Jon McCann-3]

Hi Luca,

I'm not sure your evidence supports your conclusion.

I agree that changing the font size (basically the scale of the
screen) is an important thing.  I've written up some thoughts on this
here:
http://live.gnome.org/Design/DesktopFontPreferences

Also, in some cases using a text-only toolbar items makes sense too.
See gmail for example.  However, this is something that really doesn't
fall into the same category of user preferences that desktop
background and font size do.  We should try to figure out the
appropriate design for these sort of things.

The appearance panel is pretty conflicted today.  We should probably
have a panel that is specifically about personalization and not
customization.  Maybe a rule of thumb is - things that are likely to
change based on external conditions, whims, fancies.  Of course,
personal computer accessibility is a closely related concept.  So, the
needs-to-be-written Universal Access panel would likely have some
overlap here.

In my opinion, things like background art, screensavers, and font size
are in scope.  Things like the choice of icons in menus or editable
menu shortcut keys are clearly not.

Jon

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Luca Ferretti <elle.uca@...> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> sorry to start a new thread, but I strongly desire this email will not
> missed in previous *cough*flame*cough* discussion.
>
> I've recently started helping a man to use and maintain his computer. He
> was a professor of engineering at university, but he had an ictus some
> years ago and now he's able to move only his right arm and head. He
> recently started to use Linux, and we switched from KDE to GNOME 4 weeks
> ago. We could say he's a "virgin of GNOME"[1]. No bias, no strong
> interest in GNOME vs KDE vs MacOS vs Win. Just "I want to use this
> fuc***ng computer".
>
> Some days ago he asked me how to enlarge the text on screen, so I showed
> him the Fonts tab in Appearance preference tool[2]. Then we explored the
> other options available in this tool.
>
> In the (infamous and so hated) Interface tab he found really useful the
> ability to change the setting for toolbar items, and he chosen to stay
> with "text only", saying he prefers to read a label then try to figure
> what an icon means.
>
> What's the point of this? Well, firstly report that some people actually
> use some "weird" setting, secondly that even if unused, some preferences
> are better to stay in a "visible" place then in a not-yet-available
> tweak UI or gconf-editor[3]. Someone could need them or, at least, will
> appreciate their availability and discoverability.
>
> When that man used the Interface tab to adjust the setting for himself I
> was really proud that "my" GNOME Desktop was able to provide something
> that was useful. I really hope GNOME we'll be able to keep this level of
> user-friendship.
>
> Cheers, Luca.
>
> [1] insert a sexist joke here :P
> [2] OT: this should also tell us that font settings are not immediately
> discoverable :|
> [3] another OT: honestly I've a bad feeling with any sort of tweak tool
> in GNOME. We already have gconf-editor for "real" tweaks, adding a GUI
> tool to pack options makes me feel we was unable to choose the proper
> ones and put them in the proper place :(
>
> _______________________________________________
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list@...
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>

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[William Jon McCann-3]

One small clarification...

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 5:02 PM, William Jon McCann
<william.jon.mccann@...> wrote:

> Hi Luca,
>
> I'm not sure your evidence supports your conclusion.
>
> I agree that changing the font size (basically the scale of the
> screen) is an important thing.  I've written up some thoughts on this
> here:
> http://live.gnome.org/Design/DesktopFontPreferences
>
> Also, in some cases using a text-only toolbar items makes sense too.
> See gmail for example.  However, this is something that really doesn't
> fall into the same category of user preferences that desktop
> background and font size do.  We should try to figure out the
> appropriate design for these sort of things.
>
> The appearance panel is pretty conflicted today.  We should probably
> have a panel that is specifically about personalization and not
> customization.  Maybe a rule of thumb is - things that are likely to
> change based on external conditions, whims, fancies.  Of course,
> personal computer accessibility is a closely related concept.  So, the
> needs-to-be-written Universal Access panel would likely have some
> overlap here.

Another rule of thumb... these should be things that are not only
likely to change but that we want to *encourage* people to change.

> In my opinion, things like background art, screensavers, and font size
> are in scope.  Things like the choice of icons in menus or editable
> menu shortcut keys are clearly not.
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[Thomas Wood-2]

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 17:05 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote:
>  So, the
> > needs-to-be-written Universal Access panel would likely have some
> > overlap here.

I was under the impression that such an applet was frowned upon by the
accessibility folks, as it may lead to a "ghetto-izing" of accessibility
options?

Regards,

Thomas

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[Luca Ferretti]

Il giorno mer, 11/11/2009 alle 17.02 -0500, William Jon McCann ha
scritto:
> Hi Luca,
>
> I'm not sure your evidence supports your conclusion.

Well, to be honest I didn't intent to expose a conclusion like "keep the
Interface settings as is". My apologies if it seems so.

It was more: "please don't remove those settings from the UI until we
have a different, proper place to put them". :)

> Also, in some cases using a text-only toolbar items makes sense too.
> See gmail for example.  However, this is something that really doesn't
> fall into the same category of user preferences that desktop
> background and font size do.  We should try to figure out the
> appropriate design for these sort of things.

Yes, I agree. I've installed and tried gweakui after it was "suggested"
in the other thread, and I'm shocked. I think something like this
doesn't fit in GNOME Desktop :)

> The appearance panel is pretty conflicted today.  We should probably
> have a panel that is specifically about personalization and not
> customization.  Maybe a rule of thumb is - things that are likely to
> change based on external conditions, whims, fancies.  Of course,
> personal computer accessibility is a closely related concept.  So, the
> needs-to-be-written Universal Access panel would likely have some
> overlap here.

There is a threat moving this stuff to a11y. Some people could ignore it
'cause they are not impaired. But in general, yes, we could need some
kind of "Personal" preferences tool, exposing preferences between
usability and accessibility.

Cheers, Luca


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[Luca Ferretti]

Il giorno mer, 11/11/2009 alle 22.10 +0000, Thomas Wood ha scritto:
> On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 17:05 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote:
> >  So, the
> > > needs-to-be-written Universal Access panel would likely have some
> > > overlap here.
>
> I was under the impression that such an applet was frowned upon by the
> accessibility folks, as it may lead to a "ghetto-izing" of accessibility
> options?

I suppose mouse and keyboard a11y preferences will stay in Mouse and
Keyboard capplet, so maybe William was suggesting a new "Personal"
capplet with both generale and a11y options that don't fit in other
capplets.

Let's start bainstorming?
No, maybe the appropriate place is gnome-cc mailing list :)

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[Iain-6]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Luca Ferretti <elle.uca@...> wrote:

> It was more: "please don't remove those settings from the UI until we
> have a different, proper place to put them". :)

This is just a logical fallacy that says all options are equally
valid, the only thing wrong is where you put them
This has never been the thinking behind the gnome (2) UI and leads to
the abomination that is the "Advanced" tab[1]
and user interface's that become so bloated because you can never
remove any options lest someone somewhere found it a useful option.

No matter what options a user is presented, someone, somewhere will
think one of them is useful.
To use your anecdotal evidence, would your friend have really cared if
when looking through the settings tab they hadn't found the option to
change the toolbar setting?
William's[2] rule of thumb that the options we present are the ones
that we encourage people to change is pretty much spot on

iain

[1] Which even members of KDE are now realising is an abomination.
[2] William Jon's? I never know how to properly address people who use
two names, sorry.
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[Sriram Ramkrishna-4]

How about we hide it in gconf or dconf or whatever it is and then document how to change it in a centralized location on our website as "tricks and features you don't know about" or whatever.  The idea then is to generate a community place to go for these things.  Then create a link in the appearances capplet that says something like "Can't find what you're looking for?  Check out wiki.gnome.org!"

Then we get a number of advantages:

1) we can catch who do want these options and what to restore them and have an end state on where to go to.  We could put in some rule that if you decide to remove a ui component that they will need to stick how to restore it the wiki or document in the wiki.

2)  we now have a captured audience that the marketing team can create a community around that is outside the distro.

Finally...

I usually call William Jon McCann, Bill when he's not in ear shot.

sri

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Iain <iain@...> wrote:

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Luca Ferretti <elle.uca@...> wrote:

> It was more: "please don't remove those settings from the UI until we
> have a different, proper place to put them". :)

This is just a logical fallacy that says all options are equally
valid, the only thing wrong is where you put them
This has never been the thinking behind the gnome (2) UI and leads to
the abomination that is the "Advanced" tab[1]
and user interface's that become so bloated because you can never
remove any options lest someone somewhere found it a useful option.

No matter what options a user is presented, someone, somewhere will
think one of them is useful.
To use your anecdotal evidence, would your friend have really cared if
when looking through the settings tab they hadn't found the option to
change the toolbar setting?
William's[2] rule of thumb that the options we present are the ones
that we encourage people to change is pretty much spot on

iain

[1] Which even members of KDE are now realising is an abomination.
[2] William Jon's? I never know how to properly address people who use
two names, sorry.

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