From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Darrington Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/1] improvements to the lightweight desktop example Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 17:29:47 +0100 Message-ID: <20170222162947.GA5010@jocasta.intra> References: <87wpci347f.fsf@gnu.org> <87k28ie328.fsf@lassieur.org> <87lgsy2plk.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="Nq2Wo0NMKNjxTN9z" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43928) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cgZnj-0007xA-Ss for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Feb 2017 11:30:01 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cgZni-0003IF-Nz for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Feb 2017 11:29:59 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87lgsy2plk.fsf@gnu.org> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Mathieu Lirzin Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org, Cl??ment Lassieur --Nq2Wo0NMKNjxTN9z Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 04:48:55PM +0100, Mathieu Lirzin wrote: =20 Sure it is! =20 What I meant is that Ratpoison is not the most "intuitive" WM for non GNU Emacs/Screen users. As a consequence adding it in an example configuration which is likely to be copy and paste, is maybe not the most welcoming thing. :) =20 IMHO Openbox or anything which is able to launch a program by "clickin= g" seems more friendly as a default (modulo the accessibility issues which to my knowledge are not addressed by any of the "lightweight" WMs). =20 I don't want to take sides in this debate. At the same time I think "cli= cking is more friendly" is a fallacy. It's more friendly to people who are used = to it, but decidedly frightening to those who are not. Some years ago, I was volunteering at an organisation which taught basic co= mputer use to the computer illiterate. =20 A lot of the students I taught were: Elderly, female and had arthritis in t= he fingers (but all that I dealt with were of sound mind). Many of them had, in their younger years been employed as typists, so a key= board was nothing new to them and were quite happy with it. The mouse on the other hand was a challenge: 1. I would start by standing over the student's shoulder and give them an= =20 exercise to alternately push the mouse away from their body and pull it back towards them, whilst observing the curser ascending and descending the scre= en. (Don't tell them to "move the mouse up"! If you say that half of the stude= nts, will lift the mouse from the surface of the desk!) 2. The second exercise would be an extension of this idea. I would instruct them now to move the mouse to the left, and observe the mouse cursor also m= ove to the left. Almost invariably the student would first rotate the mouse 90= degrees to the left and THEN push the mouse in that direction. This instinct is very= =20 common with the ladies - It's unintuitive to them to have an object moving in a direction other than the way it is facing. (Have you ever noticed how = men hold maps with North at the top, whereas women turn the map to that the top is in the direction of travel?) 3. The next exercise would be to get them to click on a button. Here=20 the arthritis was sometimes an obstacle even if I had set the mouse sensiti= vity=20 very low - but normally with a bit of effort the student could place the=20 cursor over the target screen area. So I would instruct them to press the mouse button. This was a often big problem. The wrist would shake so much= =20 that when the click came the cursor had moved from the target. So most of them found "clicking" extremely unfriendly. Please be very=20 carefull when making generalisations like "GUIs are intuitive" "mice are friendly" etc. As we said before - it depends uponn the user. J' --=20 Avoid eavesdropping. Send strong encrypted email. PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3=20 fingerprint =3D 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285 A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3 See http://sks-keyservers.net or any PGP keyserver for public key. --Nq2Wo0NMKNjxTN9z Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlitvHsACgkQimdxnC3oJ7NIaACeJP72ZTtYs5s8YhtmPC8iKDBj 2twAnj3wrzzSvLel3821mT5VpabIVmJJ =CTc6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Nq2Wo0NMKNjxTN9z--