Preferences gone from main menu?

[Fulko.Hew at sita.aero]

nodata <fedora at nodata.co.uk>  wrote:

> On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 10:02 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > On Apr 7, 2005 6:41 AM, nodata <fedora at nodata.co.uk> wrote:
> > > See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=151257
> >
> > I'm really not sure this is a bug. and a developer has already chimed
> > in on that bug report.  Upstream gnome  has made the "menu bar" the
> > default panel menu ui.. and fedora follows upstream as much as
> > possible. The menu bar approach has Applications/Places/Desktop  as
> > seperate dropdown menus in the panel.
> > The single foot/hat icon menu is no longer a default panel item and
> > was restructured as part of the upstream design decisions.
>
> I think "My Settings" and "System Settings" would be a good alternative.
> Still under Desktop yes, but at least "My Settings" is less ambiguous
> than "Preferences". "Are they System-preferences or my preferences?",
> etc

I disagree.
I never liked this 'my this', 'my that' style of presentation.

  1/ its condescending,
  2/ its so Microsoft'ish.
  3/ you can effectively collect everything, everywhere into a 'my
something'
     kind of category if you tried, depending on your point of view.

For example:

a) the selection of desktop (KDE vrs Gnome) would be 'my'.
b) timezone, if you ignore migratory working, could be 'my'.
c) printer configuration could be a 'system' thing, but something like
   whether or not a banner page is printed may be a system or a personal
   preference.  Printer selection, could be a system thing, or it could
   be a personal preference.

When you look at this, you really have to remember that Linux/Unix _is_
a multi-user platform, and the single user scenario is just a sub-set
of its functionality.

Lets look at the words being used:

'preferences' is a wishy-washy term implying what I would like to have
              but may not get.  'I prefer to have it this way...'

'settings' is a 'hard' word. i.e. 'This is how its set!'

Or to put it a different way; 'preferences' are things that are
over-ridable,
'settings' are probably not.

So I'd suggest something along the line of 'system settings' and 'personal
preferences'.  I think this is more in tune with how the thing really
works...
  a) this is how the system is configure, and
  b) this is what _I_ would prefer to see and use.
and yes, some configuration may end up in two places, just like the
'systems'
bash profile file, and the individual user's profile file.

And no... god no... don't build a 'registry' approach!

<soapbox on>

Having said all that.  My suggestions are only for the English language
speaking people, and there may not be the appropriate words in other
languages.  And its probably contrary to what Microsoft does, and it sure
seems to me that Linux developers today are developing towards doing
and phrasing things just like Microsoft does, rather than to 'do it right'.
And that bugs the @&$^*$ out of me!

And before I get flamed about (lack of) participation.  I've got enough
to keep myself busy with my own software, let alone go in and patch
other's software.  My suggestions are just guidelines that I give to
my developers at work, and hopefully I convince them of their merits
and they don't get sucked into the 'dark side'.

<soapbox off>