[Fwd: Re: [dcontrol] ???]

[Paranoid]

I've done some work on parsers/unparsers for various configuration files
(apache + ini). Basicly it parses everything into a tree and manages to
store that tree again, leaving comments and whitespaces intact. 
It's just a small part of a solution to configuring certain servers
(apache/php/samba/..). deb's are available at:
http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~s0107798/debian/


I spend a few afternoons playing a "stupid user", installing debian on a
testing machine and just answering whatever question was fired at me and
using whatever was being installed for me. 

When setting up a default "desktop" install on a testing machine i noted
the huge amount of packages being installed (kde + gnome + their
utilities). I ended up having around 3 different office suites + equal
numbers of web browsers , mail clients, ... . Maybe adding some extra
questions to the base-install for the semi-lazy people, who don't want
everything twice, would be nice. (the lazy just pick "desktop", the
active ones use apt/synaptic to choose).

I've taken a look at the KDE and gnome configuration utility's. Both
have great tools to customize desktops (and whatever is associated with
'user' settings), but in the area of 'system' settings both fail more or
less. 
KDE provides some separate utility's (not all of them integrated in
kcontrol) to configure accounts/groups/crontab/dat-tapes/time/kdm/sysv
init/... . These should at least be integrated with kcontrol. The user
interfaces to them are also horrible, just launch the KDE sysv init
editor and (if you survive) you know why. Gnome is much cleaner when it
comes to system configuration, but not perfect just yet. A lot of
features are also missing, like configuring the keyboard/mouse/screen
system-wide (which matters for the keyboard layout on login, which are
determined by the x configuration, not the settings that gnome/kde
applies afterwards). 

I had a (minor) usability problem, all the apps seem to be linked inside
the menu as separated entries, creating a long list of tools. KDE shows
both gnome and kde tools, gnome only shows gnome tools. This means KDE
has a menu containing over 20 different applications for system
configuration. When just configuring one aspect of your system this
isn't a problem, but when needing more tools and having to drag yourself
through the menu every time, it is. It's maybe better to move all these
entries and just popup a file browser (or kcontrol after integration)
showing these entries when accessing a central "Configuration" item in
the menu. This would definetly unload the bloated menu in kde/gnome.

You probably noticed me giving opposite advices: putting it in kcontrol
and putting it in a folder. When wanting to integrate with KDE you would
need to write a kcontrol module, when wanting to do that with gnome...
and so on. The uniformity that kcontrol brings along is also a
dis-uniformity at the same time. Instead of coding away on the tools to
make them perfect, this is a first choise we have to make:            
how will it appear to the user. 
He expects a uniform look at system configuration and doesn't want to
look on 3 different places (kcontrol / menu / folder /...) to find the
tool he needs.

[ Talking about the menu system, debian-desktop should make work of the
freedesktop.org standard. (this has allready been discussed many times,
but i don't see anything really happening). And why do i see console
apps linked in menu's...? ]

Half of this mail can probably be forwarded to debian-desktop 

Summary:
  - ugly menus (stuffed)
  - double/tripple software (contributes to the above)
  - horrible ui's for system config tools

Jens