Re: masdar or fi3l amr

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

> > First of all you are not making PC interfaces for yourself. I am not a
> > moralist and I don't intend to be a world-changer or a romantic
> > avangardist.
> 
> I am a romantic and I do intend to change what little part of the world
> I can. So, we are different, big deal ;)

Interface design is a very practical thing, changing the world is for
sure a noble thing but you will not change the world by changing a verb,
"the nature of the interface is that it imposes to be practically
percieved (I think it was Porsche or Bosh who said this)"

> Being a romantic does not mean I do not intend to be pragmatic in the
> way I do things. You should know me better than this. Do people have a
> problem when contacting awkward interfaces? Absolutely. Human-Machine
> Interface design is a science by itself.

Elzubair you are very closed person it is very hard to get a clear view of you unless
I really concentrate on reading your posts tracking your presence,etc...
and all the other tricks ;) But I haven't done this, as I like you
anyway ;) (i am not a gay but he looks so sweeeet ;)

Sure interface design is one hot topic.

Do people have a problem when contacting awkward interfaces? Absolutely

so we can agree that we need to do a user-friendly design.


> I have conducted my own little survey here in the office. People who use
> MS-Windows localized version. Guess what, they would rather be ordering
> the computer.

The only idea to get especially this point fixed is what I thought
before and was very well recieved: a poll.

> > Elzubair, and I am meaning this sincerely, maybe you have a personal
> > problem with this:"This subject makes me so irritable"
> > 
> 
> Arafat, one of the primary reasons why I started the Aunyx project
> (which pre-dates Arabeyes) is because of this particular issue. In other
> words, this specifically was one of my biggest "itches". So when I see
> someone like you lobbying to go the other direction, it does raise a
> very big red alarm.

I can also say:" I worked through 20000 lines of code, many days for 20 hours a day
and weeks after weeks to get gnome from doomness...My vision of a
cleaner interface is the masdar and if it is not I will have to go
through ALL the lines again"
And in this regard I could say :"ONLY my idea is the true one"...see the
point?

> > (I am not interested in the KDE people they have to make their own mind,
> > and I also make my own mind.)
> 
> You are mistaken here, because whatever is finally decided will be
> applicable to all Arabic translations conducted via Arabeyes. As a
> coordinator for GNOME, I would think you should be interested.

KDE is a project for itself and Arabeyes is a project for itself, I am not missing
anything as I am posting this on the mailing lists! Which means that I
am indeed interested, if not why starting a whole discussion I am not
interested in ;)
As you said earlier this is design philosophy KDE is known to be NOT
user-firendly on ther other hand I am a human being like the other human
who wrote the KDE guidelines, why don't I also think like he did?

> > IMO if I have an interface I would never concider it a living being, I
> > would never say to the interface "DO THIS"
> > "DO THAT" normally human beings only use the direct form when they are
> > in a reciprocal relation in a situation were both parts are in dynamic
> > btw each other.
> > With an interface you only press buttons or read a bottle, it's NOT a
> > reciprocal situation.
> > when you have for eg. a dog you would say to him: eat or play with me. 
> > 
> 
> Again, you are wrong. That is what 'user-friendly' is all about. In
> order to be friendly to a user, the user must feel that they are
> communicating with something, as opposed to talking in abstract forms.
> 
User-friendly is to ease the user, not stress him. If you force him to
speak to a computer this could maybe unease him.
we are dealing with (probably) hunderds of millions of potential users,
what is best? distance, ease for the user or a mix of dialogs? from amr
to the PC and then neutral form and then amr from the pc?

> > [..]
> >
> > Think about this situation now: a man besides his car and says to
> > it:"iftahi" ppl will say he is crazy, BUT if he says:"fath" they'll be
> > interested in what this masdar will lead to...
> > 
> 
> Frankly, I would think the person is crazy if he says "fath" to his car.
> Unless he's calling the militant group (in which case I would jump for
> cover) ;)
> 
Well I still think the first is true ;) but we need to do such a car
first ;)

> > [..]
> >
> > As said this was never really interesting for me, MY point was always:
> > 99% of the users "want" masdar so to get them work with linux in a
> > plug-and-play manner and don't irritate them let us make it like that.
> > 
> 
> If the users you have asked have never used MS-Windows, what exactly
> have they used? And, how can you call them users if they haven't used a
> localized interface before? 

this is a very tricky Q, a user is not a "he was/is user" the user is
the "potential user" the interface is not done for ppl using something
as they got used to it (I am sure you know about the discussion going
about ppl using linux for a long time not seeing what flaws the system
still has) but done for new users.
I mean isn't this our goal: PC with arabic Linux for the user using
english/french windows that's what we want, Or did we have at some time
another goal?

>  because I was overruled by the group ;)

> that's groupwork, at the end you feel overruled by the group...
I also feel very uneasy many times, even with the whole QAC thing...
Still I have to accept it!

Very important to note at the end is something I said very long ago, and
which is very important to see as I worked through all the gnome pos and
I know very well that interface:
you have neutral dialogs, dialogs from the PC to the user and
dialogs from the user to the PC.
And in many apps hackers writing user to pc dialogs in an infinitve form
as they think in the """""normal""""" way. And so or I translate the
whole as KDE wants and this is a real mess (which I've seen in the old
gnome screens) or I make it all neutral which is very clean.

STILL I think at the end we have to go throught it all: poll, mails, irc
dicussions till we get the best solution.

yours
Arafat