Small features for improving Abby's experience

[Daniel Reed]

On 2004-05-25T15:20-0400, Seth Nickell wrote:
) * Mark relevant items as "sysadmin" in the .desktop files and provide a
) marker on the account that shows them or hides them. Cleans out the
) menus a lot for Abby. Also adds the possibility for Horatio to browse
) through a smaller admin-only tool set.

If at all possible, I would like to steer away from the term "admin". In
English, an administrator is a decision maker, director, executive, etc.
It is a title of authority rather than a job description. (A telephone
network administrator only gets his hands dirty working with POTS when
cooking soup.)

I am not sure how we got to using the term "system administrator", but it
may cause [be causing?] undesirable social change.

(Kinda like how calling creative works "intellectual property" is changing
how people perceive creative works.)

If Horatio really is an administrator, he would not be dealing with
maintaining an individual system, he would be directing someone else in that
regard. Maybe "sysmaint"?



) * An improved calculator designed around quick, small "back of napkin"
) sort of calculations. Not modeled after the deficiencies of physical
) calculators. Abby will typically be working in another context, so a
) good calculator needs to be designed for running in small time windows,
) and make it very easy to get results into other apps.

The best calculator is probably quickly-gotten and easily-dismissed: Some
hot key to pop up, type formula (input bar already has focus), hit Enter,
hit Copy key (result is pre-selected), Escape to dismiss calculator
entirely, hit paste key. No mouse, no looking at the screen, even.

-- 
Daniel Reed <n at ml.org>	http://people.redhat.com/djr/	Desktop and Cygwin