Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Rex Dieter wrote:
>
>> Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>
>>> But I still find the menu arrangement rather puzzling.
>>> Why do I find Paired Bluetooth Devices under Lost and Found?
>>> Why is Terminal under System, while Display is under Administration?
>>
>> It's no mystery, and definitely not rocket-science.
>>
>> Apps' .desktop files include app "Categories", and the menu system
>> displays them accordingly. Lost and Found is where apps go that don't
>> adhere to the menu-spec (ie, it's a bug).
>>
>> See also:
>> http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/
>
> I realize the category is specified in the .desktop file.
>
> I looked at the document above, and didn't find it really answered my
> query. In any case, Fedora does not seem to follow the categories
> suggested there.

Keep in mind: Categories != menu labels or menu organization.

And when you say "Fedora does not seem..." keep in mind that these are also
generally DE specific, so Gnome, KDE, XFCE, (others) implement this in
different ways.

-- Rex




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On Mon, 2008-07-21 at 13:34 +0930, Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 12:17 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > Have you used KDE4?
>
> No, and I'm not likely to.
>
> > It's one click on the Menu, type a substring, then click on one of the
> > results.
>
> That's still alternating between mouse and keyboard. That's bad
> ergonomics.
>
> Menus should be a quick thing to do, that's *NOT. That's convoluted and
> delaying.

You can still use the menu as a menu. All I'm saying is that this is a
good alterantive when you can't remember where everything is (as I
can't). I find it much quicker than scrolling through a menu in fact.

poc

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On Mon, 2008-07-21 at 13:30 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> In my main menu I have (among others) Administration, Utilities,
> Settings, System and Development.

I can never remember the difference between Administration, Utilities
and System. I use utilities to administer the system ...

poc

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Tim:
>> That's still alternating between mouse and keyboard. That's bad
>> ergonomics.
>>
>> Menus should be a quick thing to do, that's *NOT. That's convoluted
>> and delaying.

Patrick O'Callaghan:
> You can still use the menu as a menu. All I'm saying is that this is a
> good alterantive when you can't remember where everything is (as I
> can't). I find it much quicker than scrolling through a menu in fact.

A sign of bad menu implementation. As we've both mentioned, KDE menus
have been a mess, for quite some time. That's one thing I've liked
about the Gnome menus, they're generally simple. e.g. Doodahs to
configure your system are generally all in the one menu, not spread all
about (unlike your other post about admin, utilities and system).

Searching for something only works if you can guess/remember the right
keyword to search for. Whereas a menu offers you all your choices to
look through.

--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686

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Rex Dieter wrote:

> And when you say "Fedora does not seem..." keep in mind that these are
> also generally DE specific, so Gnome, KDE, XFCE, (others) implement this
> in different ways.

Sorry, I should have said "KDE/Fedora".
I sometimes forget that not everyone sees the world through KDE eyes.



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On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 11:19 +0930, Tim wrote:
> Tim:
> >> That's still alternating between mouse and keyboard. That's bad
> >> ergonomics.
> >>
> >> Menus should be a quick thing to do, that's *NOT. That's convoluted
> >> and delaying.
>
> Patrick O'Callaghan:
> > You can still use the menu as a menu. All I'm saying is that this is a
> > good alterantive when you can't remember where everything is (as I
> > can't). I find it much quicker than scrolling through a menu in fact.
>
> A sign of bad menu implementation. As we've both mentioned, KDE menus
> have been a mess, for quite some time. That's one thing I've liked
> about the Gnome menus, they're generally simple. e.g. Doodahs to
> configure your system are generally all in the one menu, not spread all
> about (unlike your other post about admin, utilities and system).
>
> Searching for something only works if you can guess/remember the right
> keyword to search for. Whereas a menu offers you all your choices to
> look through.

I'm not arguing, but a) you admit you haven't used KDE4 (or did I
misunderstand?). Maybe you should try it. And b) the search is on any
substring of the command name or description, so it's actually very easy
to do. Also there's a submenu menu of recently used commands if you
really object to taking your hand off the mouse.

Menus are usable if they aren't too long (I seem to remember a usability
criterion of 7 or so items as being the recommended limit according to
various studies) or too deeply nested, aside from having a clear
organization.

The problem with all this is that it's hard for a system with lots of
diverse apps to keep to any of these criteria. I find the Windows menu
system frustrating because of this, plus the fact that stuff is often
organized under the name of the company that produced it, as if people
are going to remember that. MacOS isn't a lot better BTW.

poc

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On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 00:24 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> I'm not arguing,

No, never... ;-)

> but

Okay, I'll let you argue... ;-)

> a) you admit you haven't used KDE4 (or did I misunderstand?).

"Hadn't"... Curiosity did get the better of me. I wasn't impressed.

The new menus were tedious and slow to use, in even more annoying ways
than the old menus. Who thought that click, wait, menus sliding out of
site to be replaced with a submenu moving into the box, was going to be
a useful thing to do? It's as bad as the browse every folder in a new
pop-up window that the *old* MS Windows and Amiga Workbench interfaces
used.

KDE still goes down the route of trying to be far too tarty (for those
that don't get that reference - whores with far too much makeup
plastered on), having a gazillion things to fiddle with (so you spend
way too much time tweaking appearance and behaviour, instead of actually
using the computer), and the basic installation installs scads of things
that I'll never need (filling the menus with rubbish).

While it's often touted that KDE gives you configurability that Gnome
doesn't. I've generally found Gnome's defaults not too bad, bar just a
few things (mostly Nautilus browsing defaults). But found KDE to
require a lot of annoyances to be customised away. These days, about
all I want to fiddle with on desktops are changing the font sizes to be
not stupidly huge, and getting rid of garish backdrop pictures.

But getting back to *just* menus...

> And b) the search is on any substring of the command name or
> description,

That does still rely on you knowing the keyword to look for. I'm sure
we've all spent ages looking for something, in vain, because we were
trying the wrong keywords.

> Menus are usable if they aren't too long (I seem to remember a
> usability criterion of 7 or so items as being the recommended limit
> according to various studies) or too deeply nested, aside from having
> a clear organization.

This is where KDE shoots itself in the foot, right at the start. I did
just a yum groupinstall "KDE (K Desktop Environment)", and got a swag of
things. Scads of games and utilities I don't want. I'd far rather the
basic desktop environment install was actually that - basic. Let me add
games, utilities, etc., on purpose.

On the other hand, I find Gnome menus not to be too long, and not too
sub-divided. It's also less annoying to find things, as they don't all
start with the letter K. Browsing KDE's menus is like trying to use a
library, where some damn fool as filed just about every title under T
because they started with the word "The".

> The problem with all this is that it's hard for a system with lots of
> diverse apps to keep to any of these criteria. I find the Windows menu
> system frustrating because of this, plus the fact that stuff is often
> organized under the name of the company that produced it, as if people
> are going to remember that. MacOS isn't a lot better BTW.

Yes, Windows does seem to be an example of the worst, and KDE following
it's worst aspects. I remember early Macs being rather awful, having
just one huge menu of applications. I've only briefly touched modern
Macs.

--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686

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On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 20:54 +0930, Tim wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 00:24 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > I'm not arguing,
>
> No, never... ;-)
>
> > but
>
> Okay, I'll let you argue... ;-)
>
> > a) you admit you haven't used KDE4 (or did I misunderstand?).
>
> "Hadn't"... Curiosity did get the better of me. I wasn't impressed.
[...]

Sorry Tim, I thought you were one of those complaining about KDE4
compared to KDE3, when in fact you're arguing for Gnome over KDE. That's
fine, but it's a different discussion.

poc

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On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 10:08 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Sorry Tim, I thought you were one of those complaining about KDE4
> compared to KDE3, when in fact you're arguing for Gnome over KDE.
> That's fine, but it's a different discussion.

There's a bit of both. I definitely think Gnome is better than KDE, I
think 4 is even worse than 3. Even when they iron the bugs out 4, the
design philosophy is still nuts. It's just bad UI.

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[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686

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On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 02:27 +0930, Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 10:08 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > Sorry Tim, I thought you were one of those complaining about KDE4
> > compared to KDE3, when in fact you're arguing for Gnome over KDE.
> > That's fine, but it's a different discussion.
>
> There's a bit of both. I definitely think Gnome is better than KDE, I
> think 4 is even worse than 3. Even when they iron the bugs out 4, the
> design philosophy is still nuts. It's just bad UI.
----
see that's the great thing about choice...

I think everybody's UI is flawed and it's only the choice about whose UI
flaws you feel most comfortable with. Windows and Macintosh are no
exceptions here.

KDE is clearly trying to break the boundaries of things we are used to
and it's way too soon to tell if KDE-4 will succeed but I commend them
for trying. One thing I have noticed is that visually, the KDE-4.0.99
stuff in updates-testing is visually sharp and appealing. Obviously it
still lacks some important functionality but I can see some
improvements.

Craig

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