[302] in Athena User Interface
Re: GNOME 2.0: The incredible slipping release date.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Maciej Stachowiak)
Thu Jul 20 01:21:29 2000
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@MIT.EDU, Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@eazel.com>
Date: 19 Jul 2000 22:21:57 -0700
In-Reply-To: Bill Cattey's message of "Fri, 14 Jul 2000 17:34:54 -0400 (EDT)"
Message-Id: <lqya2x4bre.fsf@pythagoras.eazel.com>
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Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU> writes:
> > Nontheless I think gmc is better than what Athena has now, and showing
> > that as the short-term solution and a Nautilus preview release as the
> > long-term solution should (I hope) make a nice case.
>
> Agreed. We will be making a judgement call on what kind of usability
> testing should be done with regards to file manager. Perhaps a
> pre-release version of Nautilus would help. Perhaps gmc and some
> careful interpretation of user feedback will be sufficient.
We can help someone get it compiled
> > Why is "looking like netscape" a flaw? (I'm not denying it is, I'm just
> > not sure why you think so).
>
> The principle of "least surprise" operates here. A lot of users can't
> tell you the name of the program they are running. Some of them tell
> you the wrong one. Two programs, Netscape, and GNOME Help have similar
> enough screen displays that the naive users will confuse them. These
> are the people who most commonly have trouble, and who do the poorest
> job of reporting problems. I will be called on the carpet if the MIT
> Help desk has to field lots of calls from people complaining that
> Netscape is broken because the keyboard accelarators are missing. (GNOME
> Help has Netscape-like buttons but few if any accelerators), or that
> tables misdraw, or expected multimedia functionality fails. Part of my
> sales pitch for the AUI project was that it would save Help Desk
> resources, not cost more.
>
> Our experience is that certain applications, particularly the help
> displayer need to be VERY OBVIOUSLY NOT similar to any other
> applications.
I see your point (although the keyboard accelerator example seems
excessive; anyone who uses the keyboard accelerators should be able to
read the title bar).
> Our current plan here is to ignore the GNOME help browser, and start up
> Netscape pointing it at the GNOME help html pages. The problem with
> doing this is that Netscape takes a lot longer to start up, and that
> matters too. It would have been a lot better if something that would
> not confuse naive users had been deployed initially.
Unfortunately that won't work for the next generation help browser,
because we plan to not install HTML, but rather render docbook on the
fly. However, Nautilus (the help system will be built into it) looks
pretty clearly different from Netscape.
However, rendering will be done using Mozilla so it should be even
better than netscape.
> Excerpts from mail: 14-Jul-100 Re: GNOME 2.0: The incredib.. Maciej
> Stachowiak@eazel. (3617*)
>
> > If that would involve adjusting the release schedule forwards, I can't
> > do that; we will release when ready and no sooner.
>
> What you say is reasonable. I don't want you disrupting your schedule
> for one specific site.
>
> What I may ask for is a pre-release snapshot version of Nautilus for a
> specific narrow purpose if absolutely necessary to get usability testing
> of the proper sort done in mid August.
I can ask about that. We do currently have a branch with a slightly
stabilized version for demo purposes.
> > I'm willing to advocate the importance of fixing specific bugs you
> > mention, or better yet, advocate the integration of your patches to fix
> > these problems.
>
> This is precisely the thing we will need.
All right; I'll mention the issue about the help browser, and also the
fact that a prerelease would be helpful.
> > Let me know what else would be useful ammunition. You have the attention
> > of one of the two people in charge of the next GNOME release, so make
> > use of it. :-)
>
> Thank you for your most generous offer. I will ponder this and get back
> to you.
Looking forward to your further thoughts.
- Maciej
