Re: [trinity-users] Kmenu Reasoning Explained

Long Response Incoming. Do not be offended by the response. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 17:48, Katheryne Draven <borgqueen4(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm sorry, being under 20 is old? o_O This is an another attempt, based on the attempt by Borg^Queen (the android running Windows Vista build 1), to improve upon the KDE menu system and make it more organized. I am going to be referring to Kickoff, the KDE3 alternate menu and the KDE4 default menu. The favorites menu is usually the first place people see – and in turn, the place that many people expect all their favorite applications to exist. When people have to put in the effort (elderly and middle-life crisis people (Borg^Queen)) to navigate to their all programs menu, it just doesn't work out. Let's keep a short list of what people come to expect here. A web browser (Firefox, Chromium, Rekonq, Midori) An email client (Thunderbird, Evolution, Kmail) Although there is the idea just to put a link to a webpage showing the most popular email sites. A word processor (LibreOffice, AbiWord, Koffice) A File Browser (Dolphin, Konqueror) A Personal Settings Link (Many distributions call it System Settings, confusing users) A System Settings Link (Requires Root Access) A help option (For the easily confused) This usually provides almost everything a user needs to get started on his/her computer. For those of us who have an application not listed in there that we want, we usually dive into the Applications tab. Let's go through a typical KDE menu. Development Education Games Graphics Internet Multimedia Office System Utilities Help (Link to help browser) YaST (or other related System Tool) This is very complicated for the modern day user. Sure, it's alphabetical! Ooh, this is great! No. It's not. Let's see an example of why. We'll use Mandriva's setup: Internet Office Graphics Sound & Video Tools Development Fewer categories, more simplicity. Of course, there's more clutter, but that's up to the user to clean up all that crap. Internet and Office at the top – The most used applications are usually Internet-connected Software and Productivity software. If I had to make a menu style, it would look a bit more like this: Internet Office Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) Development More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) It's very close to Mandriva's, I admit that. But truthfully, it's probably the more logical one. You should see how Fedora butcher's theirs with upstream's. I've found apps in the wrong categories. You can find a few submenus. But NOT TOO MANY! That's where I think openSUSE got it wrong. It's more work to the average user, and a pain in the ass after a navigating them a few times. The search menu at the top of Kicker? I've been using SuSE and Kicker for a long time but I didn't even notice that until 11.1 came out. *Assume people are oblivious to the obvious.* I've seen stuff like this: Kickoff > Applications > Internet > Web Browsers > More > Firefox Me: -___-****** Submenus? Here's how I will break it down. Internet Messaging Web Browsers Office Office Suite Business Tools Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Graphics Music Video Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) (we can have Windows emulated start menu here) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) (see below for this) Development IDEs Debuggers (I'm drawing a blank for this) More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) Borg^Queen did this layout: Desktop Publishing (Contains everything related to published documents of all kinds) Development Edutainment & Health Emulators Games Graphics (symlinked) Lost & Found Multimedia (both audio and video) Network Settings System User-Apps (This is a special directory that initially remains empty. Users can place their fav apps and link other menu subdir into this one. Some distros I proposed this to are now calling it a “favourite” directory.) Truthfully, I find Settings and System too similar in meaning. Emulators? Many people don't know what that is when they first try out a Linux system. Edutainment & Health: not crazy about this. Lost & Found: it's like KDE lost an app you just installed. Desktop Publishing: I saw you have Finance in there... Wouldn't that make it more than Desktop Publishing? Um... Office? I'm not going to go into the details like what kind of apps should be in each category. The thing is, less is better for some people. And giving sub-menu after sub-menu will drive someone crazy (eventually) if they are not already by looking at the structure. And regarding submenus in Tools: Tools > System-Wide Settings submenu Any system setting that isn't in YaST (or other System Tool) The Rest of the stuff here is all Utilities That nobody cares about (usually) You're then asking, where does YaST (or other system tool) and Personal Settings go? Please move the tab over to Computer in the Kicker menu and See above. For those of us who like old-fashioned mouse-moving Kmenu, It would look something like this: Recently Used Apps ----------- Internet Office Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) System-Wide Settings Random Utilities Here Development More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) ---------- Personal Settings YaST (or related system tool) ---------- A Favorites Menu Favorite Apps here Switch User End Session In the end, all I'm trying to say is that if you break it up too much, it's worse than what it was in the beginning. Feel free to criticize, laugh, humiliate, or hate. :) -- later, Robert Xu