[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Client Suggestion

[Cameron Morland <cjmorlan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

La 2001-04-17, Yanshosh@xxxxxxx skribis:

> Okay, thanx. Sorry to bother you.

Personally, whenever a question like this where the answer is "obvious"
comes up, I don't say "oh, what a moron, I wish they were smart enough to
understand." Instead I say "what's wrong with the user interface, why
isn't it clear to this person too?" This sort of feedback is valuable too;
what to do about it isn't at all clear. Making the UI "intuitive" to the
most common computer user means making it act like Windoze, because it's
the most common UI style (and no better than mediocre, IMHO). In designing
the UI we must be willing to do things in a different way than before if
it is better. Otherwise we can only copy, and not innovate.

This, incidentally, is one thing I really dislike about Sun's StarOffice.
It makes your nice UNIX box look like Windoze, down to the "start" menu
and dumbly-placed window buttons, regardless of OS or window manager.
Gnumeric suffers from following Excel too closely. If new software can
only copy established software, then software will stagnate. I find this
idea unattractive.

I think I'll step off my soapbox now. :)

+----------------------------------------------------------
| PGP http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/student/cjmorlan/pgp.txt
| cjmorland@xxxxxxxxxxxx
|
| Thought is not a management function.
|     --John Ralston Saul
+----------------------------------------------------------