Tim Waugh wrote:
> Were you trying to find a previous job that had completed? What was
> your need to use that application prior to submitting a print job?
>
> (Please humour me -- the decision to make the application inaccessible
> until a print job is submitted was based on thinking about different
> use-cases, and I think one was missed.)
Oh, I quite understand that you do need to talk these things through.
What had happened was that this computer has two users. In trying to
hide the puplet icon from the non-technical user, we had accidentally
removed the entire notification area. We don't use applications that use
the notification area often, so we didn't notice the lack of icons
there. (We don't print much, for example.)
I tried looking for the print management UI on another computer, which
didn't have any print jobs outstanding. So I obviously didn't see the
icon in the notification area.
As I implied, I normally go straight to the command line to manage print
jobs, so my experience counted against me...
I think there are five messages to take from this:
* although it's convenient having the application icon appear when
needed, there's no way to predict that this will happen. So you can't
discover how to manage print jobs without actually printing, and it's
distinctly non-obvious that "actually printing" is the step you need
to take to discover how to manage print jobs;
* likewise, this is a potential support problem for organisations that
don't have step-through checklists for this situation;
* the printer-queue UI is dependent on the notification area being
there;
* it's not that clear whether you are "removing" an icon in the
notification area or removing the notification area itself (if you
click at the edge of an icon, for example);
* it's not that clear when you remove the notification area which
functionality you are removing (should it have a dialog box to
clarify this?)
Point 1 is about how predictable the desktop is. On a
properly-configured desktop, the UI would be there when you need to use
it, but might not be there when you want to learn about it.
And this is probably about prior experience. I'm not sufficiently used
to things like print management UI appearing and disappearing based on
whether they can be used. It's not sufficiently consistent with the rest
of the applications I use, although since they are mainly Firefox (not
Gnome), OpenOffice (not Gnome), the GIMP (likewise), occasionally XMMS
or derivatives, and gnome-terminal, that possibly means I'm not
sufficiently used to real GNOME applications.
Points 4 and 5 sound like Gnome UI bugs, rather than Fedora bugs. I'm
not "in" at Gnome -- I can raise bugs in their bugzilla, but I can't
champion them.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail: james@ | ... and watched Richard Stallman ask one of the waiting
aprilcottage.co.uk | staff whether the spring rolls did indeed spring and
| whether they would bounce.
| -- Telsa Gwynne
