[ale] Memory aid requested

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

On 20 Jul 2003, Jeff Rose wrote:

> 
> > Jeff - Thanks for that tip - I don't think I've seen it before anywhere. 
> > You're correct about the level of intuitiveness, it approaches the blind 
> > randomness of a four year old child to find that.
> 
> I believe whole-heartedly in the idea that one should be able to figure
> things out easily.  my wife constantly complains that I'm the typical
> male who refuses to read instructions.  I believe that most things
> should be intuitive enough that instructions are unnecessary.  For
> example, my vcr is so convoluted that even instructions are difficult to
> follow.  That is very poor design.  A good design will anticipate where
> the user will look for things.  RH has gotten better overall in this
> area but gnome seems to be less intuitive than it used to be.  The one
> compliment I will give MS is that they have spent a lot of time with
> this issue.  Too bad other, more important issues were neglected, i.e.
> security.  But Linux developers tackled the difficult issues first, now
> it's time to solve the little issues that users will want. 
> 
> > 
> > Rambling around google and the web, I'm slowly finding out a little more 
> > on these menus. Information seems to be so sparse I wonder if anybody 
> > changes menus other than developers.
> > 
> I test drove Mandrake 9 briefly and menus were changed within Nautilus
> akin to ordinary file systems.  That was strange but makes more sense
> than the RH9 way. Still, Mandrake was unstable on my box and has its own
> usability issues. 

The ability of Nautilus to customize menus is turned off by default on RH9 
systems. From Http://www.wse.jhu.edu/newtnotes/main_file.php/sysadmin/55/

as root head off to /etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules and make the files 
default-modules.conf correspond to default-modules.conf.with-menu-editing.

There is some further work to be done to allow individual users to edit 
menus noted in URL above. However - all of this just allows users to make 
local changes to the menu structure, not global changes (system wide). 
I've found (so far) some clues as to the files/syntax/etc needed to pass 
the magic, but so far I don't think the process is coherently documented 
anywhere. Well, perhaps internally to RH, but that doesn't do me squat of 
good.

It does look like the process is common to both Gnome & KDE however, 
although how complete the merger is I don't know yet.

I'm not above asking somebody if they have further resources to 
investigate this stuff


> 
> > Thanks again.
> > 
> 
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> 

-- 
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If you think Education is expensive
Try Ignorance
                   Author Unknown
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