Talk:Main Page
From Grokdoc
Bold text==Discuss Main Page==
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Let's use bottom posting for this discussion, except that responses go inline, indented.
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Sign your talk entries please!
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You can sign your name using three tildes, like this: ~~~. If you use four, you can add a datestamp too. It helps for people to follow up on your work. We can find out who posted what without a signature, but if you sign we can leave a answer on your talk page or send you a message. Never sign an article, only TALK: entries. -- Dominick 13:52, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Change "Ideals" to "Principles"
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Applying Free and Open Source Ideals to Documentation -- the word "ideal" has the connotation of something perfect and unattainable. Suggest "Principles"? -- Johnmax
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Alternate Main Page
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I created an improved version of the Main Page at Main Page Edited (and have now copied and pasted my edits to Alternate Main Page). Added lots of structural markup to clarify and break up the long passages for scannability. Please, someone authorized, swap in my edits. -- Johnmax
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- We are going to add a link off Main Page to Alternate Main Page. Jeremy 09:44, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- Please add a link to Hierarchical TOC as well. If you copy info from Alternate Main Page to Main Page, as was intended, this will happen automatically.
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- Thomas Frayne 10:35, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Links to other wikis
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Ok do we want to link to other wikis like Wikipedia for some of these terms? We probably should do some interwikification. Jumping to pages say on Ethernet, we can avoid reinventing the wheels, and focus on Linux and the problem getting people started. Dominick 08:05, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- PS Are we using this or a VIllage Pump? Dominick 08:06, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- Yes. In fact, we should be putting the topics where they fit best, and linking from other places. In particular, I have suggested coordinating with LQ Wiki, and focusing this wiki on finding usability holes, with the topics filling those holes put in the LQ Wiki.
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- To make this easier I have added interlinks for the LQ Wiki. For example, to link to the LQ Wiki Linux article, LQWiki:Linux, simply use [[:LQWiki:Linux]].
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- Jeremy 09:59, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Access to Linux resources, or what rock to look under
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- Prev Quote: Assume that they are semi-intelligent beings who can look something up on the Internet, and give them the tools to implement the solutions they find.
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Part of the problem with that is not knowing under what terms to search for - I've come across this very often, and I've been "doing" Linux since kernel 1.0.9. I also have the problem of: I put in a set of terms, and it turns up with a gazillion results.
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How about a "What can I do when it doesn't work" set of pages? Categorise them - First page: what doesn't work?
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Categories: video, network, mouse, sound, etc. Second level would be: What are the five most common problems that go wrong with these categories, THEN (and here's the most powerful facet) provide a last "I want to suggest something else" reply in each category. Or, "Here's where (or more importantly, HOW) to search for other related problems in this category".
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This can be made distro-agnostic, or it can describe the three most common distribution's methods used to solve problems - RedHat/Fedora, Mandrake, SUSE ought to be the most common distributions that newbies come across on covers of magazines, and so on. More intrepid people have got on well with Debian too. Knoppix is a great example of that. And for the real hard-heads, Gentoo.
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GUI examples work well, but we also need to provide decent command-line examples for those who have never used one. We need BOTH examples, just in case we don't have a GUI - and also to show there is always more than one way of doing something.
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I got a copy of Knoppix 3.3. It works sweetly on my friend's laptop. But I don't know how he could set it up to use "The Internet" without knowing some of the facets of what "Connecting to the Internet" means. This is commonly shared with the Windows/Macintosh brigade. The same applies to video drivers, sound issues, I18n, and l10n. How does a Greek user with no real English understanding get "into" the very AmerEnglish environment that the Internet seems to be?
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The Viking (viking667@users.sourceforge.net)
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- To find the term you want to search for, use GrokSaurus. Once filled, it shall supply hints what one maybe would have wanted to look for, even when he used a very unusual or odd name for it. JOff 07:15, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Hierarchical TOC
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Please add Index to Applications, ie pine apache etc, to front page
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and Index to Functions, Email internet etc, so that the user can go directly to whatever he needs Archivist 08:15, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- Right. I am adding a LQ Hierarchical_TOC to the LQ Wiki. The same should be done here in Hierarchical_TOC, and it should be linked in the Main Page. Since the Main Page is not editable, the Hierarchical TOC will contain a link to an editable Alternate Main Page that will contain suggestions for future version of the Main Page.
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- Thomas Frayne 10:44 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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grokdoc(grokdoc)
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Oh, MY! How about a grokdoc(grokdoc)? For example there are lots of notations
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such as colorizing, "M", "MN", groksauraus, etc. that are quite unfamilar to
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one not a devotee of chat rooms. Just as important is a primer on the use
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of formatting - PLEASE - IANAL, ... (User:Duratkin)
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--24.128.206.249 09:52, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- You can visit the Help section for a brief intro. You can even add to that section if you find something missing ;) M means the user has marked the change as minor. N means the article is new.
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- Jeremy 10:57, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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www.useit.com
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check [1] website about usability. They suggest (and prove) that testing on 5 users is enough - you are not likely to learn much more, but much more work to evaluate it.
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Another law of Open Source is to avoid wastefull duplication. You just *have to* use wiki, so dozens of people does not have to write the same things. Share also evaluation step of testing.
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Also, there are dozens of websites with documentation for newbies. I assume grokdoc wants to be central gateway (is it right?), you need to allow to provide for links to other pages already written, with some comments what to expect there. Hard part will be to organize pages in intuitive way. Good luck!
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Coordinate Grokdoc and LinuxQuestions
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Please confine Grokdoc to usability reports, discussions of usability holes and kudos, and pointers to LQ Wiki to direct the user to LQ topics that users found to answer their questions. Note that the topics that fill in the usability holes should be put in LQ Wiki. (Since Grokdoc is based on LQ Wiki, if you can contribute to one, you can contribute to the other.) For further details, see my Groklaw post: Coordinating with LinuxQuestions
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To avoid confusion, Grokdoc should use the same color codes for links that LQ Wiki does.
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Thomas Frayne 10:58 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Supported Hardware Index
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Add a Supported Hardware Index to allow people to find what driver they should be using, given the Vendor, Product, Model, Revision, etc.
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There is a great deal of difficulty in matching drivers to hardware. Linux drivers generally refer to the chipset, whereas a manufacture may release a product under a single name, but with a variety of chipsets. For example, D-Link has released 5 distinct revisions of their DWL-650.
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- Aumaden 12:24 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- We should use LQ HCL for this purpose.
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- Thomas Frayne 13:14 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Networking section
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Add a high level section on setting up a home and office network. I mean, this is where the true power of FOSS lives.
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Suggested sections:
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- Secure your network (firewall)
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- Setup your own email server (sendmail, postfix, qmail....)
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- Setup your own Domain Name Service (bind)
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- Setup your own webserver (apache...)
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- Improve performance (squid)
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- Protect the innocents (squid-guard)
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- Share the wealth (cups, nfs)
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- Living with Microsoft (samba)
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- Create your own multi-media server
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- etcetera....
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- I think these sections should focus on the usability problems doing these tasks, and should have links to the corresponding LQ Wiki sections for HOWTO information.
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- Thomas Frayne 13:43 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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I agree that usability issues should be catered to, but the empowering nature of FOSS should be explained right off the bat and up front. After all, once a newbie has mastered the basics, they are no longer a newbie and should be - will want to be - encouraged and helped to explore the full potential of the GNU/Linux experience. This should be a part of this documentation effort. I think it is incumbent upon us to do so. Anywho, that's my take.
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Why workarounds and not fix the problem?
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If you find a usability bug in an application, why the solution offered here is documenting the bug and moving on?
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Why not report the bug to the project that created the application so it can be fixed?
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And that is what usability problems are- bugs.
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The idea of this project is nice, but IMHO the notion that you can fix usability bugs (esp. in applications ment for the "layman") by documenting them is misguded- the target audiance is the last one to read thrugh *any* docs.
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Think Mac- people say that it is so easy to use because it "just works", not because everything is documented.
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Documentation is important, but it is no replacement to usability.
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- Things have to be documented before they can be reported. Once the info is here it should certainly be reported upstream so that the effort here turns into real improvements. Jeremy 10:03, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- Further, workarounds and HOWTO's should go to LQ:Wiki. Grokdoc should be used for discovering, analyzing, and organizing usability problems, not solving them or documenting the solutions. See Hierarchical TOC#Usability study for more information. Thomas Frayne 10:56, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- This project is valuable, even essential, but the key issue (should bugs lead to documentation, or to re-engineering the interface?) is well raised. Really usable tools is don't need much documentation at all, they just seem obvious to their intended users. This approach may be a fundamental challenge to the Linux community, which often defines itself by technical prowess, and the fact that users are often also developers.
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- Temptations of the classic obscure interface (or installation) can arise here: in effect to say: 'if you can't work it out, you must be too dumb to use it, but we can write documentation so detailed and exhaustive that even a fool like you gets it.' Instead, ideally, you accept that if user needs more than a minimal manual (1 page intro for each app?), the authors have not submitted to the stern taskmaster of usability refinement humbly and creatively enough.
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- Consistency and familarity of metaphor and flow is important, as is hiding complex problems with buggy components. David Vaile 21 Jun 2004
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- I agree. I think that grokdoc should not care, however :). We are building a (hopefully) huge usability database for all Free programs, environments and distributions out there. Hopefully, data will grow in quantity and quality, and some analysis will be done by competent people, here in grokdoc, detecting fundamental concept problems vs minor bugs.
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- Someone else, "outside", might want to use this information to write an excellent collection of documentation (for example, for technical support for enterprises), but this is not our business. Personally, I hope the Free projects will use these data to fix their usability bugs and (arguably, even better), inspire new Free projects fundamentally designed from the ground up to be usable. 4lex 14:08, 20 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Off-Road Linux
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The main problem for newbies is also the main problem with this wiki: it fails to anticipate when and where people will get off the road and how to handle it when they do. Here, the basic categories involve high-level tasks such as email, web browsing etc. which are simple for newbies, thoroughly addressed by the documentation and have lots of help available on the Internet and elsewhere. Where I got into problems as a Linux newbie (and I still get into problems) is when I need to do anything that isn't one of the main anticipated tasks. This wiki assumes that if your comment doesn't fit in one of the main categories, you are an expert and will know how to add a category, or how to work around the problem (say by editing the discussion page).
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- As per the Instructions, someone who 'does' understand is supposed to sit down with someone who does not. The observations are then entered into GrokDoc by the person who 'does' understand. Jeremy 10:08, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Newbies don't know this, and there's no category called, "If your issue is not on this list". Likewise, any time a newbie wants to do something slightly non-standard, Linux fails miserably. For example: You are a Linux newbie, and you have run into an unexpected problem getting X running. You access the excellent help available on the web and you realize that you have to edit a config file, but you don't know how to use vi or emacs, and these are the only editors installed by default in your distribution. You would like to use a graphical editor, but you can't get X up and running. You've heard of Midnight Commander, and people recommend it as a simple way of navigating the file system, but typing 'mc' at the prompt yields nothing. You download Midnight Commander, but you cannot find a binary for your distribution The documentation assumes that you know how to compile from source, which you don't since you're a newbie who just wants to get a simple editor up and running, and every man page you look at CONTAINS NO EXAMPLES!
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- Linux is built by Linux experts for Linux experts. For the sake of brevity, a great deal is taken for granted in the documentation. When the documentation addresses newbie issues, it is often frustratingly simplistic and lacking concise examples. Every Linux install has one or two unanticipated wrinkles; it is impossible to anticipate every issue with every system. FAQs are fine, but they are not the answer, since by definition a FAQ answers the FREQUENTLY asked questions, and not the rarely asked questions that are, collectively, frequent. Better to include a 'crash kit' with every distribution containing basic applications so simple and intuitive a moron could figure them out: an editor, a file system navigator, etc. Think MS-DOS. Type 'help' at the command prompt and get a list of commands. Type 'help {command}' and get a simple explanation of the command and an example of its use. Some shells do this, but the output is incomprehensible to newbies. - <P> - The crash kit is just one specific suggestion: the number one problem with Linux is its failure to address the fact that rare problems are common in aggregate. Every newbie hits one bump that would stump an expert for a moment or two. This is inevitable, and no amount of work on installers, driver support, package managers and guis can change it. Better to anticipate that every newbie will run into one oddball problem. Assume that they are semi-intelligent beings who can look something up on the Internet, and give them the tools to implement the solutions they find. - -
- This is the purpose of the LQ [Wiki]. Whenever a usability problem occurs that can be resolved by better documentation, we should document it there. Usability problems related to bugs in distributions or applications should be reported in bugzilla, and should be in organized lists in the LQ Wiki.
- Thomas Frayne 13:43 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Distributions
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Does it really make sense to make sections like SuSE-Web, Mandrake-Web and so on? What is that good for?
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Aroedl 13:53, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Aurora Linux 1.0 is a distribution for Sun Microsystem's SPARC architecture. I am currently trying to install it, but I am having trouble getting XFree86 configured, just like I've had trouble with it when I tried Gentoo and then Debian. If someone could provide some verbose help on Aurora installation, particularly XFree86 configuration, I would be a very happy camper. Novasoynovasoy
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Grokdok Personals: Noob seeks guide
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I haven't yet actually tried to install and use Linux, perhaps out of laziness, but partly due confusion and being overwhelmed by the seeming complexity. I'm not completely clueless; I was able to set up and customize Apache using tutorials MacDevCenter and run a webserver out of my home.
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I'd like to particpate in the project, but obviously not as the teacher/guide. Is there anyone out there that needs a noob? I'll be installing on a cheap notebook (and I need suggestions as to which to purchase) and would like to use wireless.
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I think the first page is too long - you just need short answers which lead off if more information is needed - action: consider moving the Instructions to another page.
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Marcos
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Some Basic Advice
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1. Write the main page FOR newbies.
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2. Drop the firewall, and add KDE and Gnome
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3. Add file browser/file editing topics
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4. Make it easy to add a comment to an existing page (an add button, for example)
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-- Dan
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More Personals
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I too would love to participate as a noob.... Maybe we can set up an area where beginners and mentors can meet up?
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- Make a user page (or just sign your entries, like I do), we can discuss in your discussion page :) It would be great for beginners to be encouraged to write about their usability problems, while helped by those with more experience. -- 4lex 11:11, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Fun and Games
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Please add a Fun and Games section. Games lead the growth in the PC/Windows market, and they continue to be one of the biggest uses for Windows.
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- I'm all for this. A Multimedia section and a Games section is sure needed. Get the newbie to see a digital photo sent by email, to plug in a camara and send a photo by email, to download an image from the internet and use it as wallpaper, to download some (legal) music and hear to it, to put in a DVD and see it. This are "day-to-day" tasks, as much as writing a letter and printing it. Get the newbie to find a game (maybe install!) which she likes to play for more than 10 minutes long would also be nice, of course. Usability in these areas could help from grokdoc, in my humble opinion. -- 4lex 00:23, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Environment
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Why isn't there a section on the user enviroment (KDE, Gnome, etc.)? This is what the user deals with and the biggest single thing that affects their impression of what Linux is. Most of these have details that are difficult for a newbie to learn.
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page is v text heavy. bulleted lists perhaps?
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anything to break it up.
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Let us not use a Wiki at all
- Wikis are virtually unusable for an audience of contributors as large as the GNU/Linux community. At the very least we should limit wiki contributions to those who have supported the Groklaw site in the past (perhaps financially). Other contributions from non-members can still be made, in case there actually is some useful information contained in them (unlikely), but these contributions should be reviewed and edited by the approved members of the community.
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---CmdrTaco
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- This is a different model. It might not work, but it's a little early to declare defeat. I think it holds great promise (if the focus of the site is tightened). Let's not move to Slashcode just yet. ;-) Johnmax 18:16, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Hey CmdrTaco. I know what you did for the community and especially you should know that a chaos works much better than a structured one. It just takes some time. I guess it'll work like wikipedia. After an initial phase it'll all make sense.
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Aroedl 20:55, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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If contributions to GNU/Linux itself was limited to financial contributors, it wouldn't have lasted long enough to need a wiki in the first place. Let's not assume that Linux people can't work together.
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12.214.20.174 09:52, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Is this for Free/Libre/Open software only?
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Should people add info about setting up proprietary software such as Oracle, Opera, StarOffice? or is this for documenting free-as-in-freedom software? (MySQL, Mozilla, OpenOffice)
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If the software package runs on a FOSS platform then I think you should write about it - even if it is proprietary. Other people will be in the same position sooner or later so you might as well document it now! Just create a new link and start typing.
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Remote users of Linux systems
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I run a Linux login server that my mother uses for email. She's using Windows over a dialup to access it. It would be nice to have a category for using Linux by TCP/IP from Windows, with solutions for such things as getting files from place to place, dealing with quirks of Windows terminal emulators that Linux programs don't expect, and so forth.
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--66.92.72.41 17:59, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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First set proper expectations with your "subject"
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This is submitted as a Draft-1.
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First, set proper expectations.
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Tell the person
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- you want an hour or two of their time to help you with a study that will help people in the long run
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- you want their help with a "usuability study" for an operating system and programs
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- the User Interface may look different from what they are used to
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- that it will take some effort on their part to use it for the tasks
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- that this is not a test of their skills, and taking a long time to figure something out doesn't mean it is their fault
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- that we are not looking for a "right answer" but just their input for the usability study
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- that some of these tasks will be frustrating to them, and to tell you wht frustrates them
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- that you want to record what they do, rather than help them figure things out
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- encourage them to talk out aloud on what they are trying to do and record what they say and do
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<more?>
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-srr
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Folds?
- One feature that I think would be of great value here, is sort of like Kate's code folding. In medical texts, there are several levels of detail that the reader can read from. They start witht he most general and work down to the most detailed. I find myself wanting to give technical knowledge in a general area, and I think it'd be a Good Thing(tm) if I could throw it there, have them click on something and have the details told to them - but only if they are interested. This would help flow, along with providing technical excerpts.
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- This feature is available in Grokdoc, and in its cousin, LQ Wiki. Just make up a title for your details page, enclose it in square brackets, (as I just did with the term "square brackets") and include a short description. When you save or preview your overview page, a link to the details page will appear. You can click the link to get to a blank page to insert your details.
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- Thomas Frayne 10:26 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Manual pages in LQWiki; usability studies in Grokdoc
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I'm trying to post just usability data (I had problems with this and that, my newbie friend could not do that without help...) but I keep on finding articles which are more manual-like (descriptions of the programs...). Which one is the aim of grokdoc? I understood that we have to provide raw data, and this would serve specialists to make usability analysis, detect most common problems..., but, of course, I may me wrong :) -- 4lex 13:55, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- The main focus of GrokDoc is indeed the usability study. Jeremy 14:03, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- When you know how to solve a usability problem recorded in Grokdoc, link the Grokdoc page to a page in LQWiki, and, if necessary, write the page.
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Thomas Frayne 19:20, 15 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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My Linux story
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Having read some of this topic Im both excited and concerned. Because it allready falls into the same old problem. Info overload. I find myself saying I really really want to help here, Im a perfect candidate but Im not sure where to put my story. Who do I ask? so it goes in the right spot.
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My story is simple, its a link, its a twiki :)
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http://mec-symonds.eng.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Saqqara/NewbieLinux
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When I first sat down at a linux box? this link gives you the inside story.
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I recognise it dosnet quite fit your bill because I had someone install and keep linx running while I was supposed to learn it, while I was supposed to, by myself install linux on another machine. But its so close to what you are developing I hope it helps. Please remember that I am not a technical writer, I therefore dont explain those things very well. This link is a ,diary, a plea for help. I return to linux with week long breaks sometimes. Most of my work is still windows orientated but linux is the future, it has the foot in the door, lets bust the door open!! Now that grokdoc is here I will indeed use it for reference to see how it compares with me but remember. Problem one is lack of time and steepness of learning curve.
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- I'm giving your twiki a look. Some of it falls under category "manual", but I definitely see "usability problems" material. Doesn't it have copyright problems to bring things from there (c owned by contributors, all rights reserved) to here (Creative Commons License)? Apart from that, sure we could use your stories as some kind of "raw data" (Usability-raw?). -- 4lex 00:17, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Linux with senior citizens
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Linux with Senior Citizens
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I am a senior citizen, well, the local senior center declares me a senior; I'm 59. I retired in 2001 after 30+ years in the software development industry. I do various volunteer work for the center.
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[ content moved ]
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- Wow, I really appreciate your work (and your contribution to grokdoc)! I was about to move this entry to Usability-raw, but I just thought you might have some more specific data (such as: easiest and hardest things to pick for the "few with some prior computer experience"). Do you want to share some more memories?
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- Anyhow, I think linux is definitely being used more and more in environments similar to the one you described (people with no computing backgrounds and heavy personal problems, not only elderly, but also in poor regions e.g. through NGOs...). I hope your data get analyzed and good ideas come out of the analysis :) -- 4lex 13:47, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- I've just moved your report to Usability-raw. I think it belongs best there. As I already wrote, feel free to add details, I'm sure they will be of great help.-- 4lex 10:21, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Only New Users? No, all users
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GrokDoc motto is to provide the source of information for Linux newbies. That's great. But I see one "but". I have helped lots of users to deploy Linux or fix their instalations of Linux. I've seen lots of problems people are running into. Most common problem users are hitting with Linux? They read documentation for users! Most of the people I have helped were need only one thing - good source of information. Not user information, but rather in depth description of what is going on.
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Learned lessons? Well, people do not need another "user friendly" source of information. What they really need - is help reading existing documentation. Explanation of HOWTOs, READMEs etc in step-by-step manner, so they will not spend another two weeks for example guessing how to configure modem.
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People I was helping were coming to Linux not because of some political attitudes (hate-M$/saving money or something) but because Linux was helping them to solve their problems at home and at work. And "user friendly" guides were helpless for them.
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That the difference, in my experience, which drives people from Windows/MacOS to Linux: you can really understand how system works and tune it to your top performance, rather than trying to bend yourself to work with system. Hence, it is impossible to understand everything.
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Point 1. I beleive it is important to provide not only whatever-in-five-minutes guides for users, but to use power of Wiki and give a user choice of several articles: simple explanation, explanation with more technical details and complete explanation of what is going on, best with historical links.
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Point 2. What I'm sometimes missing, when helping people, it is a source of information about Linux as a complete systems. Some sort of documentation, which concentrates not on bricks systems is build on, but the cement, which glues this bricks together. In other words: how different Linux components interact with each other. This is quite common questions from users "Why I'm changing this, and something else breaks," or "Why this program requires that kind of input, not like others?" Most of documentation concentrates on behaviour os single component, but not on how all this components which compromise Linux as OS do interact.
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We should not forget, that newcomers are newcomers only for some time. Half year later people will start asking different - deeper - questions.
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We cannot provide all answers to all possible questions newcomers can pose, so it is very important to teach newcomers where and how to look for information they need.
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--User:Philips --84.128.209.11 18:08, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- Don't forget that the purpose of this Wiki is to identify usability problems, not to solve them. Your excellent points have to be considered for the purpose of identifying usability problems, but, when a user cannot start by searching for terms in LQWiki:Main_Page or browsing LQWiki:Hierarchical TOC for a topic related to a vaguely understood question and quickly come to a cookbook answer to the question, then LQWiki has a documentation usability bug that should be reported. The fix for that bug should be placed in LQWiki, not in Grokdoc.
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- As you pointed out, Grokdoc should point out usability problems, and LQWiki should contain documentation, for all users, starting from the Newbie who does not know what to search for to find if there is a solution to a vaguely understood problem, all the way to the expert who wants to try something new. This documentation should help the Newbie to become an expert in the most efficient way possible.
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Thomas Frayne 21:20, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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MediaWiki/Templatex/msg?
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I thought I could resolve the linking problem with little work, by preparing some mediawiki templates (like in wikipedia). That way, we could e.g. include a mediawiki with content similar to Mandrake-Email in each of the Mandrake Email programs, a mediawiki containing every distribution/mail, to be included in each of the Email programs... I really think there is a serious underlinking problem in groklaw. You should not have to go to the Main Page nor type in the address bar in order to go for an article to a related one... OK, back to the question: are mediawiki templates enabled? They would be a great tool! -- 4lex 15:00, 19 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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Screen Capture program could help?
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Just an idea, as you can't afford to set up expensive facilities and invite people in to study, why not distribute a screen capture program and ask people to start the program and then complete a task. That way you can see the exact steps that people go through. If you set the tasks as something that should be achievable in 5 mins the linux equivalent of viewletcam (is there one) should be able to compress it into a 2mbish upload -- [User:hopeless noob]--
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Going slowly?
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Are we coming to a halt? I hoped to see some activity from the administrators, trying to organize the people and motivate them to contribute productively. Is there some work being done under the hood, that I cannot see from here? This place seems a little dead :-( If there is a clear task I (or other motivated users) can perform to help this grow, please explain :-) -- 4lex 18:08, 23 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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- The best thing you could do to help the site grow would be to track down some users and enter in usability reports. You may want to contact PJ to see if she needs anything beyond that. Jeremy 16:08, 25 Jun 2004 (EDT)
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That worked well.... NOT!!
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The irony of this has not been lost on me...
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This morning I woke up and I was thinking about the advantages of OpenSource/Linux over Windows. A few days ago a Windows advocate that I work with made a comment and it was a bad day anyway and I wrote this dissertation about why I think Windows sucks and what advantages Linux has. I thought maybe it I would see if there was someplace on Groklaw that I could submit such a thing.
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So I get on my SuSE 9.1 box here and fire up FireFox 0.8. It has an announcement that 0.9 has been released and it reminds me that I have been intending to update it. So I download it with no trouble. I unzip it into /tmp and start the installer. It wants to install it in /tmp/firefox-installer which is probably not a good thing. So I have to mess around for a while to get it to install someplace decent.
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The install runs and then complains about some XDM permission crap and dies. I think it's ok because I ran as root to install it and it probably can't use the display. I try to run as me and it still has complaints. I don't have time to explain the whole ordeal now as I have to go to work. I will say that I have been screwing around with it now for over an hour and it still doesn't work. (Hence the reason I'm using Konqueror to write this.)
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This is the kind of [...] I have been complaining about with Windows for years. This kind of stuff cannot happen for ordinary users (I have been fighting with computers for 30 years now and if I can't get it to work right, what chance has Joe Regular-User got?). I am now extremely frustrated and I have wasted all of the time I planned on spending writing about things that were better with Linux. Instead that time was spent having an experience just as bad and just as frustrating as I have with Windows.
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Thanks for hearing me out.
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- J. Scott Edwards
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Linux / Windows comparative usability study in Germany
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I found on barrapunto (the spanish slashdot) a post about a Linux usability study (pdf format) performed by the german company relevantive. The conclusions of the study: The ease of use is practically the same for both systems although under uneven conditions (all the participants were already familiar with Windows and MS Office).
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The study consisted in assigning tasks to the users to see how they would manage them.
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I thought that this might be relevant to GrokDoc.
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We should have user's own rants as well as user observations
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A tip: it would be great if we could have a way for users to write their own reports of what they experienced. This may be an excellent addition to developers observing users. Even with good instructions, observers will see the user's actions filtered through their own eyes. As such, they will be able to see things that the user is not conscious of (whether a user switches among windows using keyboard or mouse, or whatever), but they'll also miss things that the user thinks for himself.
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Perhaps this site can provide some structure for users to categorize such material. That structure doesn't have to be exhaustive; it's a wiki after all, and it should already be easy to move content around after its creation.
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I'd love to post my own rants here as well. For now, take a look at http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2005033107583993&title=Hear%2C+hear%21+Problems+and+solutions+in+Unix+GUI+design&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=295412#c295586
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and some of the responses.
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Cheers,
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Emile
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83.84.167.116 Emile van Bergen, Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:48:59 +0200
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Action against wikispam urgently needed
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I have been fetching off a wikispammer for the whole day. Please accept that this wiki does not have the level of participation needed to run as open-for-anybody. Action is needed, and I propose to let only logged-in users edit pages. This would probably reduce the wikispam considerably. Alternatively, we need some wiki sysops to ban the open proxy IPs used by the spammers. Haakon 15:24, 23 May 2005 (EDT)
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About incompatibilites of Calling ABI in 64bit GCC/others and Windows
I am new here and i really don't know if I followed your specifications for now. I just wanted to add a new part to the discussion (i myself need to research some more to be for sure of course, but this what i encountered)
I am using Linux now for more than a decade (pre 1.0 kernel) and have lived with dos/windows for a bit longer (89). I am accustomed to c/c++ and especially x86 machine code - where I enhanced my knowledge to 64bit for some time now, boosted in the last weeks (i am using linux on amd64 since 4 years now)
After starting to write a jit i just realised about the differences of register usage in 32bit and 64bit between linux and windows.
In 32bit the world is ok (Linux followed the intel abi, which even microsoft did at the time)
But looking at the 64bit we have a whole new situation. Linux (or better gcc) was first on the field with amd64 support, so we followed what amd specified as abi for standard calls.
Now looking at the SysV Abi and the microsoft abi for amd64/intel64 code, we can find a whole lot of differences.
Shouldn't this be added as well, as Microsoft deliberately had choosen a different set so that incompatibilities cannot be circumvented? (like doing a wrapper for dlls to shared objects and vice versa?)
I am not perfect, I know, but this was one thing which struck into my eye in the last days when i needed to get to know about such things - i have to take care, that the stuff works on both platforms (and more) - but of course thats my problem in the end (it is not my intention to get my work done by others)
If i am not too far away, i believe this is also one of the main problems, why cygwin(better gcc) on 64bit windows is not yet really there (or did i miss that somewhere?)
If you need it a little more specified, no problem. This was just a starter.
