Logical and relevant [Was: Filesystem - hiding system folders?]

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Peter Garrett">

> I'm all in favour of making good GUI tools - but I genuinely find it
> puzzling when people make the assumption that users are intimidated by a
> quite logical file system structure...

Logical is not always 'intuitive' and doesn't rule out 'intimidating'. You
really have to ask what it *means* to people who don't care to learn about
or understand it. If it doesn't mean anything, why put it there? The stuff
we love about 'logical' FHS organisation is utterly irrelevant to the broad
majority of users who care more about what they can do with a computer than
how the computer gets it done. All of this stuff is dull machinery. It may
be very interesting machinery to you and I, and we'll hold strong opinions
about which way the machinery should work [1], but to someone like my Mum,
it's just a huge pile of pointless drivel that gets in her way of grokking
how to do what she wants to do.

Apple went half-way with OS X. While they hid a bunch of stuff, they still
exposed chunks of their own machinery (quite different to *nix machinery,
but still machinery). Mac OS <= 9 was pretty good in this respect, with a
couple of fairly safely tucked away locations for computer machinery, but on
the whole, very satisfyingly learnable and tactile. (There will always be
more levers and buttons in a computer than on a car, and it's likely that
you can learn about all of the levers and buttons on your car but only some
of the ones on your computer, but ideally you'd learn what you can in very
similar ways.) We can probably do better - eventually - and it does not
necessarily imply FHS-incompatible changes to do so.

Always remember that what's logical or relevant to you may not be logical or
relevant to your user. Given that you're posting to a mailing list about a
FLOSS project (let alone the chit-chat geektalk sounder list), I'd be pretty
comfortable saying that *most* of what's logical or relevant to you about
computers is not so for the majority of (current and potential) computer
users. :-)

- Jeff

[1] AIX and HP-UX evil. FHS good.

-- 
GUADEC 2006: Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain            http://2006.guadec.org/
 
                           Wars end, love lasts.