Honestly
i'd rather get rid of the shutdown dialog 100%
:-)
One of the aspects of usability us experienced users need to remind ourselves is how
clueless most users really are. I was reminded of this the past several days as family
visited. Some of the conversations were about technology. I noticed that everybody but me
phrased their thoughts in terms of brand names rather than device names. For example, one
person presumed Kindles were the only ebook readers on the planet. Several of these people
don't use computers and often the conversations left those people sitting like
proverbial wall flowers.
A neighbor down the road was given an iPod for a gift. He was told to connect the iPod to
his portable CD player. I had to explain to him basic terms of using the CD player and
iPod to control the selections stored in the iPod.
I have worked often with very intelligent people in the engineering and technical fields.
Yet almost all of them are clueless about using or configuring computers. Anything that
happened out of their ordinary experiences of using a computer almost always resulted in a
trip to visit me to provide answers.
I'm talking about very intelligent people, yet they don't know the basic keyboard
shortcuts of Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-Z. Yes, I'm serious. Now consider the
run-of-the-mill people of average intelligence. We can't rip features that any of
these types of users expect or have become accustomed to.
KDE has always been the most configurable 'nix desktop environment. Although not
always embraced or followed, "the user decides" is a foundation design element
in the KDE family. I want to see Trinity continue that tradition. Adding check boxes in
KControl solves the configuration problems for everybody.
Anybody who subscribes to this list is computer savvy. The standards we adopt for using
computers is way different than just about everybody else. Us experienced users need gobs
of compassion to create computer desktop environments the masses will embrace and use.
Hmmm, and I'm fond of it. Perhaps we could include
an option
in kcontrol to
disable the display of the dialog for those that don't want
it. That would
satisfy both camps. A simple control or tab under
Desktop/Behavior would work:
[x] Display Shutdown Dialog on Logout.
[ ] Include Shutdown Options in KMenu.
This is the approach I prefer. For the hard-core minimalists, perhaps we provide
documentation with building tdebase such that the dialog is preconfigured as disabled.
Perhaps add a build option too. That somewhat ties into my conversations about creating a
wiki page to address something called Trinity Light.
Darrell
