Questions for deployments of GNOME [LWN.net]

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 17:39 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Questions for deployments of GNOME by Los__D
Parent article: Questions for deployments of GNOME

By this definition, you'd slim down Wikipedia to a dozen pages or so. It's too large and cluttered to find anything in, you know, and search dialogs, well, they're 'clutter'.

I mean, sure, kcontrol is cluttered in the sense that there are an awful lot of settings in there (of course there are: the whole point of it is that *everything* that's configurable in KDE should be configurable from that place if necessary, and thanks to KParts this is done without adding bloat to anything) --- but because there's a search option, that clutter *is not annoying*. You can browse if you want, or jump straight to an option: both are possible.

Computers are good at looking for things. Why not let them?

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Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 20:08 UTC (Mon) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (2 responses)

Ok, comparing an encyclopedia with a desktop is just too far out...

The purpose of Wikipedia is to retrieve information, of course you want to be able to search that information.

The purpose of a control panel is to configure stuff. If a search box is needed for that, then something is wrong, at least in my mind.

Search for:[How to change pixelsize of that bar that I NEED to be 3 pixels wide, find it now, or I will not be able to WORK!]

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 12, 2006 22:49 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Simply searching for `bar' or `pixel' would be a good start.

And since it's an isearch-style search box (well, sort of like isearch mixed with M-x occur), you often don't even need to type in the whole word.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:31 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

"Ok, comparing an encyclopedia with a desktop is just too far out..."

Why? Both seek to be comprehensive, target themselves at all users, and are the first point of interface to their respective fields. Seems wholly appropriate to me.

Search isn't just for finding needles in haystacks; it's also for being able to focus on what you want rather than looking through everything, and for being sure you haven't missed an occurrence of what you're looking for. That's useful whether you have ten lines or ten thousand pages to look through.

On a broader point - why should my interactions with my computer be bounded by the limitations of your imagination?