[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

[Christopher Blizzard]

On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 08:10 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Calum Benson wrote:
> > 
> > GNOME has plenty of settings you can lock down to stop people getting
> > into a mess; if you maintain their machines, did you ever consider doing
> > any of this for their accounts?  If not, was it lack of an obvious way
> > to do so (during installation or elsewhere) that prevented you from
> > doing so, or some other reason?
> 
> I had (and still have) _no_ idea.
> 
> I think Gnome people have this very strange dichotomy:
>  - "We have tons of config options.." (it's true, sometimes, just not 
>    where I cared)
>  - "..but we hide them, because only experts should use them"

Kathy Sierra does a good job of describing some of the problems around
this:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/02/how_much_contro.html

(Includes cute graphics!  If nothing else everyone should see the
"Canyon of Pain")

I was in a meeting the other day where we were discussing this very
issue in the context of OLPC.  In that meeting it was called "the Ramp."
The problem is described as "how do you keep something simple, but grow
it to fit the level of experience of the user."

In GNOME I think we've done a very good, and somewhat painful job, of
creating something that's very simple and very usable for someone who
sits down in front of the machine.  I say painful because we've had to
remove a lot of things that people were very used to in order to get a
base experience that's pretty good.  But the thing that I think Linus is
stumbling over is that canyon.  How does he figure out how to get what
he needs, which does exist in GNOME, without having to learn everything
there is to know about GNOME?  I think it's safe to argue that
gconf-editor is not the way to go, but at the same time just about every
other option requires that everyone is exposed to the options that
anyone could possibly ever use.  And that's a huge amount of complexity.

If we're ever going to grow beyond our small community, I think that
what GNOME has done is important.  You have to have a very simple base
to start with.  (Rule of thumb: once a feature is added it basically can
never be removed.  Ever.)  Building a system that's simple and friendly
and works well is where we start.  But we do need to figure out how to
grow with our users in an unobtrusive manner.  I don't think that any of
us have figured out how to do that, and you're paying the price for it.
Sorry about that.

--Chris