Re: SEUL: SOTs comments

[Magnus Lycka <magnus.lycka@tripnet.se>]

At 18:35 1997-09-03 +0300, Santeri Säkäjärvi wrote:

>3) Current directory tree of Unix is too complex. Directory names like
>   etc, bin, /usr/local/bin etc. are too hard for win/dos oriented
>   users. 
>
>   => The basic directory structure should be something like
>      - bin 		(/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin/)
>      - configuration	(/etc, /etc...)
>      - users		(/home)
>      - software	(/opt, /usr/local/bin)
>      - devices		(/dev)
>      - ???		(/var)
>      - sbin 		(/sbin)

This is a BAD idea. It breaks all standards and causes more confusion than
anything else. Besides, if things are set up so that the user
can access everything from the GUI he will never need to know what
a path is. (Ok, a slight exaggeration)

Actually, if there will be free WYSIWYG word processor for newbies 
on Linux available eventually, I think it would be clever if it hid 
the paths etc more or less as the shareware word processor YeahWrite
(which is otherwise not a very good product). For those who don't
know, YeahWrite lets you write for instance 'letters' and stores
all the letters in one place and you can browse through them etc.
It also has other document types, and it takes care of formatting
and storage for all these files. It's all too limited but has some
good points. The user shouldn't need to bother about a 'file'. They
should bother about their document. Surely there should be a 
possibility to work at the file level, but it should not bee a
requirement. I've seen all to many PC's with all files in the root
directory to think that naive users understand this concept.

Otherwise I think there were a lot to think about in Santeri's mail.
This is just the kind of perspective we need to reach the Win95
users.

--
Magnus Lycka, Folktrov. 6C, 907 51 Umea, Sweden
+46(0)90 198 498, magnus.lycka@tripnet.se, www1.tripnet.se/~mly