In hindsight I should probably ask on the user lists what they think of the installer. On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Sven Neumann wrote: > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117010 > > Sven closed my bug report suggesting removing or reducing the user > > installer. I have moved it to NeedInfo, as I hope with more information > > you can be convinced it is worth reopening. > > I did not close your report. I marked it as a duplicate of bug #113165 > because the issue has already been discussed there. The effect of marking it as a duplicate of a bug that has been RESOLVED INVALID is effectively saying that you consider my suggestion to also to be invalid. At the time you made no suggestion at all that there was any possibility of reopening the original issue. > > At the very least the second and third pages about the files that are > > getting installed could be removed > > The information about the files that are installed in the user The dialog tells you what the names of the files that are going to be installed but not their purpose or roughly how much space they will take. > we should just drop a number of files in the user directory. Unlike > the GNOME developers we don't expect our users to be stupid. We put a I disagree with that in so many ways. Instead I will look at what we can agree on. > > At most all you would need say is one sentence, something like > > GIMP will need to install configuration files which take up roughly > > 500 kb. The documentation could explain what these files are for those > > who want to know more. > > Which documentation? At the moment the user installation dialog is the > best documentation we have about this topic. Unless you write a better > documentation, it won't be removed. If the current documentation does not explain what the install is doing then I will write addation documentation to explain it if there is a good chance it will be be accepted. I found this document but it covers only a much older version of the user install http://manual.gimp.org/manual/GUM/install.html#446035 I am all for giving users the information the want to know but when a user first starts the GIMP I want to give them the infromation the _need_ to know. That should include enough information to tell people where they can find out more if they really want to know. Most users dont read manuals or documentation, especially not before they run a program for the first time. I cant be the only user that just accepts the defaults. Look at these instructions for example http://www.geosc.psu.edu/computing/static/FAQ/GIMP.html "We recommend letting the setup program pick for you" If i look longer I could probably find more examples, better yet ask the user mailing list. The user does not need to know about the General Public License (it does not apply unless you want to distribute modified versions). I know why developers want it there (evangelism) but it is annoying when Proprietary crap spews non essential license information at you (which most users ignore anyway) something most developers prefer not to copy. It will be a day or two before I can build from CVS and look at the changes that you said have been recently made. I dont see any mention in the Changelog yet http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/gimp/ChangeLog > The question here is "Why?". I don't see any good reason to skip this I am sorry but too much information is pointless if the user is not likely to know what to do with it. > user to find out where she can do this? Doing it during the user installation is a perfectly good place to present the user with this It might be a good place to present this choice but the first time a user runs the GIMP how likely are they to know what the right settings for them actually are? > want to hide it's complexity. Why should we? We do want to hide _unneccesary_ complexity. I am not suggesting we make the GIMP any less powerful or flexible. The GIMP already does hide complexity in many ways, the GIMP has a menu item to Rotate 90 degrees, would you argue that Rotate is enough and that users are perfectly able to specify 90 degrees if they want it? You really should try to spend a little time using recent versions of Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro or various other pieces of graphics software and copy what you like and recongise there are better ways. Take the example of Red Eye correction, you can do Red Eye correction in the GIMP but many programs have a dialog specifically for doing this task which makes things easier but does not make the program any less powerful. Usability is not about Dumbing down, it is about optimisation and the biggest bottleneck in many systems is the time it takes the user to respond to unneccessary questions. Perhaps you might have more respect for the opinion of a real hacker like Havoc Pennington, he is on the list usability@xxxxxxxxx if you care to ask him. Sincerely Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
