keybindings

[Erik Harrison]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Walter Alejandro Iglesias
<roquesor at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everybody.  It is my first message to this list.  I am writing
> to you to suggest a pair of things.
>
> Gnome and Kde have never convinced me for several reasons (I've used
> mostly icewm and wmaker).  The first reason is they seems to ignore
> Unix/Linux bases.  I've feel since my first linux approach a
> disconnection between desktop environment and the `underworld' of bash.
> Principally because of keybindings.  An environment without an unified
> keyboard is not an environment.  A system without an unified policy is
> not a `system' (it can be plural and logical at the same time).  Linux
> desktops developers have seem forgotten the predominant linux emacs-mode
> text editing.
>
> Does exist linux users that don't use a terminal?  Does exist linux
> users that don't live the half of time in bash?  Then, if all of us
> must press `all the time' C-p and C-n to move up and down in bash
> history, or move cursor up and down, who likes a pop up printing
> dialog or a new window in the rest of applications?  If all of us must
> press C-c to cancel a process (not trivial!), C-v to move to the next
> page, who likes copy and paste functions in this keys?
>
> Why default keybindings in all linux desktops are MS Windoze
> keybindings?
>
> The only one reason that comes to my mind (if it exist another, please
> let me know) is to put it easy to people who migrates from windoze.
> After all, most people was first a windoze user.  But I think it is a
> big mistake, it is better that people will know from the beginning that
> linux is different.  For people `dificult' is `to change habits', not
> `complexity'.  But things like, for example, ubuntu bootsplash or
> windoze keybindings generate false expectations, then it is probably
> they finish seeing in linux a fraud.
>
>
>
> Second suggestion:
>
> It doesn't exist a linux desktop environment that gives priority to
> usability and productiveness.  Yes, I know computers becomes toys.  I
> know users bother you all the time with `I want icons in my desktop',
> `I want transparency in my terminal' and all kind of fluorescent
> dildos.

Downloads would skyrocket if we offered fluorescent dildos. Oddly
enough, they weren't as requested as the "icons on desktop." A clear
indicator that instead of giving people whatever they ask for, you
should give them, after careful consideration, what they need.

P.S. Zing!

  But I think it would be wonderful including all this idiot
> features "if and only if" the `real' features don't depends of them.
> So the few users that need to use the computer are able to choose
> installing only useful software.
>
>
> Epilog:
>
> I am telling it to you because xfce is a young project and it is not too
> far from the ideal.

Xfce is as old as Gnome, and almost as old as KDE.

 Concluding, my truly wish is: don't convert it in
> gnome or kde.  Keep it light and usable in the linux way, please.
>
>     Saludos, Walter.
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Erik
"It's true, Alice Cooper is a hippie, but he's the bad kind of hippie.
He's the kind of hippie that breaks into people's offices, beats them
up, and shoots them in the head. Why? To steal their antique chairs."