Re: some suggestions towards a Debian .desktop policy [Was: Warm up discussion about desktop files]
On to, 2011-04-21 at 16:20 +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> writes:
> > For example, Thunar works perfectly fine outside Xfce, but you don’t
> > want to show it in KDE or GNOME.
>
> Why not?
>
> Some users may prefer it to the "standard" app for the desktop
> environment they're using.
While we perhaps should make anything possible for our users, unless it
requires too effort from us, that does not mean that all users should be
confronted with every available option all the time. Having to choose
from a very large set of options, most of which make no sense to you,
makes people confused and unhappy. That's not restricted to the
stereotypical uneducated "person from street" kind of user, either. It
also applies to the hardcore hacker, when they do something they're not
already familiar with. The hacker might be better at dealing with the
situation, having had more experience with it.
Choosing from a fully populated "Debian" menu is a bit like choosing
from a menu in a restaurant in a foreign country, when you don't speak
the local language. There are likely to be a large number of choices,
and a few of them use a word or two you recognize. You either choose
something based on those few familiar words (but they might be used in
strange ways), based on luck, or based on asking for help from others,
perhaps the waiter. It does not matter how good a chef you are, if you
don't understand the langauge. If you do this often enough, you'll learn
what everything is, but at first you might have only banana dessert and
potates boiled in chocolate. (Which might be delicious, but surprising,
when you thought you were having soup of the day and pasta with
meatballs.)
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