solution?

[Michael Shigorin]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 09:29:02PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > Maybe someone tells the GNOME usability kids the magic
> > keywords "user level"?
> You may wish to go back and look at the failures of user levels
> in projects such as Sawfish and Nautilus.

Hm, I seem to recall something like that... (after your tip)

Still, I was shocked by infamous applish arrogance of Nau
developers early enough to avoid it, and didn't really run
Sawfish beyond a few glances at gnome1 (wmaker type).

So seeing the exact problems you mention below requires
installing some ancient distro in qemu, it seems.

> It merely serves to increase the combinatorial explosion of
> preference overload.

I think it's reasonable with an additive stack of those.
Not about variating the existing ones but adding on top.

> We've discussed it. We've tried it. It did not succeed.

There's kind of a joke here: "I don't like cats! -- Maybe you
just don't know how to cook them?".  While being cynic it's a bit
about overcomplicating simple things: GeoWorks users (including 
a friend of mine) were extremely unhappy to move off it, because
it worked for them.  Did NewDeal know the recipe?

Maybe it's like stuffing XML where it's appropriate and where
it's not.  Perfectionist/theoretist approach is going to yield
explosions of many kinds, "good enough" one usually isn't. [...]

Still, you should know better than me.

> Plus there's a lot of weighty academic material written on this
> issue, which we haven't ignored.

Hey, I'm M.Sc.  And tend to think that a lot of "weighty academic
material" is utter BS, going to that position from thoroughly
believing in science and by experience.  Just because it doesn't
neccessarily correlate with observed reality.

If the materials insist on inevitable knob burst, then they're
just not covering all of the fact base.  And someone knew better,
maybe exactly by ignoring them as it often happens in science
and engineering (see e.g. penicilline history).

---

After all, it doesn't matter that much -- if GNOME is quite
striving (and helping its users), it's just fine.  Those who 
don't like being its users can move on, it's about choice :-)

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike at altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/