Re: Debian menus policy
On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 11:12:00PM -0800, Craig Dickson wrote:
> I believe that had to do with the number of items a person could manage
> mentally (without external references) at one time. This is why, for
> example, US telephone numbers are seven digits, with the area code
> thought of as a separate value. This way you have two things to
> remember, one of which has seven digits (actually, three plus four,
> which is even easier to remember) rather than a single ten-digit value.
Note that this is also subjective. Here we have 8 digit phone numbers and
once you're used to it you have no difficulty remembering (usually as 2
groups of 4).
> However, when you have some sort of visual reference in front of you (as
> you do when you are browsing through menus), this "seven limit" isn't
> really relevant; there is a limit of comfort, but it's much higher than
> seven, and I think for now it's more limited by vertical screen space
> (how many menu items you can fit into a single column without having to
> scroll it) than by the limits of human intelligence.
As long as the menu items are sufficiently obvious, I'd have to agree with
that statement.
> I think some sort of reorg of the menus could do a lot of good, but I
> still don't buy a top-level layout consisting of generalized operations
> (e.g. editing), rather than of application domains (sound, graphics,
> text, games). Part of the problem with the current menus are that they
> mix the two models rather arbitrarily and sloppily; so you have both
> Apps->Editors and Apps->Text. Which one should I expect to find a text
> editor under? Well, in practice, you find it under "Editors", but it's
> not obvious why "Text" wouldn't be just as appropriate. What does a text
> editor operate on if not text?
To be honest, my answer to this question would be "both". Is there any
particular reason why a program may only appear in one place?
> So we agree that the current situation is a mess. To make the proper
> location of text editors obvious to all, either "Text" or "Editors"
> should be eliminated. You'd rather eliminate "Text"; I'd rather
> eliminate "Editors".
Personally, I'm intrigued with the idea that each program has a set of
keywords and the menu is generated dynamically from the set of available
programs. The main issue I have is the menu may then differ significantly
between machines. If you start taking into account often used programs it
would become completely messy (but hopefully more intuitive).
> I'm really intrigued by the idea of allowing multiple dimensions in the
> menu data, and letting the user decide what sort of view he wants. Does
> that seem like overkill to you?
Why a fixed number of dimensions...? :)
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>
http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
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