Announcing the KDE Quality Team Project

Quique writes "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing. KDE is a very attractive project, offering high quality software and is freely available. There is a lot of people who feel the urge to give something back, but stop in the middle of the way, frustrated by the steep learning curve. The aim of the project is to reduce these barriers by welcoming these potential contributors, and by offering documentation, support, and even guidance if requested. The objective is to support the new contributors, (programmers, documenters, testers, artists...). Have you ever wished to help KDE in some way, but never knew how? Keep reading!"

Comments

On the heels of ESR

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

This seems like it's follwing on ESR's remarks on CUPS the other day but it's not. They've put a lot of planning into this including how to maintain your own CVS and which part of KDE to target for improvement first (KDE PIM).
I'd like to see some of the numerous UI critics take part in this. You know, the ones who write scathing reviews of widgets and fonts like Eurgenia?

Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha

[LMCBoy]

The KDE project itself doesn't do any packaging at all; they only release source-code tarballs. kde-redhat is an independent project.

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[LMCBoy]

That's really cold, man. You paint the KDE project as extremely elitist, when it is actually totally the opposite. KDE isn't some exclusive club of core people, any developers are welcome to join the project at any time, and have always been welcome.

Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit.

You have it totally backward, actually. The Quality Team project was intiated to include the large number of non-developer people who have been saying that they've always wanted to help KDE, but don't know how. KDE-QT provides a framework to actually include these interested and passionate contributors into our project.
They asked for a project like this.

So you see the QT tasks as boring grunt-work. Fine, then maybe KDE-QT is not for you. But there are those who excel at this kind of thing, and actually enjoy it.

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Thank you!!! That's exactly what I was trying to say. I am a novice programmer, and have little if any to offer to the KDE codebase. But, I would love to contribute and have extensive experience in things like customer service and communication. The KDE-QT is a FANTASTIC idea!

GNOME has had a quality team for years.

[luge]

2-3, depending on how you want to count. It's good to see KDE catching up.

Some backgound information about KDE and usability

[falonaj]

Being a KDE contributor myself, I feel the urge to correct some of your statements and agree to others.

GNOME has had the Human Interface Guidelines for over a year and a half now.

KDE has User Interface Guidelines since more than 4 years. These guidelines are a bit outdated, but they are followed by almost all applications within KDE. This is one of the reasons why KDE applications are quite consistent with each other. KDE has been dedicated towards usability since its foundation, but usability was never the only goal. KDE was never perfect, but its usability has been constantly improving every version. Compared to most other PC software, KDE has always been doing reasonably well in terms of usability.

The whole project is dedicated toward usability.

True. The GNOME project made a good decision when they introduced HIG, even if many GNOME users were very angry at the time. Removing functionality was one of the main methods of solving GNOME's early usability problems, which should only be done if there is really no other way to solve usability problems.

Most people complaining about KDE's usability are suggesting the same strategy for KDE. I don't agree with this. Solving usability issues in other ways is more difficult and takes more time, but the end result will be better if we stop telling others "I know better than you that you don't need this". But anyway, I agree that having good user interface guidelines is important.

Don't get me wrong, KDE has some inovative technologies behind it, but even 3.2 is miserably lacking in terms of usability and style. IMHO, this "Quality Team Project" looks more like an after-thought or a lame side project than a redirection of the whole project.

My impression is very different. The Quality team idea has been greeted with a lot of very positive responses among the KDE developers. There is a lot of interest in this within the KDE project.

The Quality Team is not a QA project

[cwoelz]

I am the one who is currently putting the most effort into the KDE Quality Team implementation, so I am qualified to speak for the project:

Let's start by making something clear:
The main idea is not to build a QA project inside KDE. The main idea is to support and embrace new contributors with any background, and help to organize their efforts. For instance: Any doubts about the docbook? We are glad to help. Do you want feedback on your work? We are happy to provide. Looking for guidance? Hop in!

We don't want to point what is good for you: we try to present you with a long list of things one can do to help, and organize these efforts.

The recommended approach for non programmers is different from other projects: it is more like the project manager in a company than of a task specialist. In other words think of acting upon the whole of Kontact instead of acting upon the context help for the whole KDE project. We recognize that the main tool for helping an application is knowing it well. A quick look at the activities list, presenting the requirements for performing the tasks, is sufficient to prove that.

http://quality.kde.org/develop/modules/

Yes, the activities include QA. But this is just one of the activities. Hope this helps to avoid confusion with GNOME's bugsquad (also nice, but not related: it is a different concept).

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[Anonymous Coward]

There is just no good substitute for multiple desktops with good session management like KDE has.

Except that multiple desktops are highly confusing unless you are a power user and have mentally trained yourself to remember that there are programs open "somewhere else" in the computer. Even a power user like me gets confused with multiple desktops and has to scan each one. It requires holding a lot in your head, which is okay for a computer geek but not anybody else.

My mom, as an example, doesn't even understand *multiple windows* she closes windows before opening new ones.

KDE session management is terrible. Why? Because it only works with programs that are aware of it. Programs like gvim and Mozilla do not remember their state properly. So is a half-baked feature better than no feature at all? I would argue NO, because it will confuse the average computer user who doesn't understand why one program is memorized properly, but not another. They don't understand the mishmash of technology under the hood, and don't need to waste brain cells remembering which programs "work" and which don't.

Also Unix-style copy/paste is much faster and more comfortable than MacOS-style

X Windows has at least *TWO* clipboards, one cut/paste style, and the other done by clicking the middle mouse button. First, having two clipboards is confusing. Having a clipboard that works differently then the market leader (Windows) is confusing. Accidentally clicking the middle mouse button and pasting random stuff into your program is confusing.

This is another power-user-only feature. I see many people that have problems with two-button mice.

Maybe if there was a special "paste" button on the mouse, it could be a good feature, because then people could associate the button with pasting easier.

I personally accidentally hit the middle mouse button into my text programs (like mutt) once a week at least, I really hate that. Am I stupid? No, I just hit the wrong button, why should I now have to undelete the mail and cancel the printer job, and whatever else those keystrokes did!

But of course, marketing has told you that all those features are "for geeks" only and Windows/MacOS is the best there is - so often that people started to believe it. You don't even need examples, facts or reasons!

Have you ever sat down with someone to explain how the computer works? Someone who wants to get their job done? I guess not. I know people who don't use cut and paste at all, they just retype things. They don't mind, because it works for them. You are so beyond the average user and you don't realize it. What should they have to learn this, when it is possible to create a UI that they can use, AND the power users can use.

There are basic principles in designing things, from doorknobs to computer interfaces. One thing is to keep the interface as *simple* as possible, and make all the "modes" obvious. All the things you described are power user features because they require an extra mental model of how the computer works.

KDE doesn't have any usability problems, period.

You've got to be shitting me. Here's one: in Konquerer (which I'm using now), opening a new browser tab when the tab bar is full pushes old tabs out of sight. Where did they go? Did the computer eat them? Oh look.. a couple little arrows.. click on them, now the tabs have jumped around (bad UI design, never move a control element!) This has so many levels of confusion (beyond the confusion of tabs themselves).

Here's another one: my konqueror has three magnifying glasses at the top. If you squint you might realize one has little footprints, one has a "+", and one has a "-". Can you guess what they do based on my description? Why are they even *there*, I've never clicked on them. There are TWO printer icons. One has a printer, one has a printer and a square next to it. What do they do? Who knows and who cares! When I "print" a web page (maybe once a year), I

Re:Will testing fix

[be-fan]

* The 5-10 second load-time for KDE apps
This is a legitimate problem, though getting much better. With prelinking, load times are closer to 2-3 seconds rather than 5-10.

* The 4 second load time just to open a folder
Depends on the size of the folder. Normal-sized folders open pretty much instantly on my machine. Performance on large folders (/usr/bin with thousands of items) could be improved, though.

* The cramped and embarrassing K menu, with a 100 different groups and completely illogical redundancies like "Preferences," "System Settings," and "Control Center"
Um, my stock Debian KMenu has a dozen folders. "Preferences" is gone in 3.2. There is a "settings" folder and a "system" folder, which is logical --- one is for preferences, the other is for system utilities. Kinda analagous to Windows's "Control Panel" and "Accessories/System Tools" And "Control Center" is an entry in "Settings"! Are you sure you're not mistaking the quick- access area at the top for default menu items? And the categories seem perfectly logical to me. "Graphics," "internet," "multimedia," etc. Sounds perfectly logical to me. Certainly, more logical than the Windows method of giving each company a top-level entry in the menu.

* The poor naming scheme that--despite close to five years of bitching--hasn't been changed in favor of something sane
KDE will drop the 'k' when GNOME drops the 'g', Apple drops the 'i', and Microsoft drops the 'MS'. Remember, its "MS Word" not just "Word."

* The convoluted Control Center that is an example of poor interface design with 3,000 items and subitems, grouped together under a cursor that for some reason won't stop changing to the hand icon
Actually, having all preferences in one program seems a lot more easy to navigate for me than a folder full of applets, one for each task. Work is on-going to make KControl more logical (there was an OSNews entry recently) but the "centralized control" aspect will remain. And Microsoft does it too --- consider the Windows NT administration console.

* The fact that the cursor changes to a hand icon when it moves over taskbar buttons (cursor changes are confusing, disorienting, and annoying to newbies and power users alike)
The cursor changes to know when you can click on something. And you pulled that "cursor changes are confusing" thing out of your ass. People manage to use Internet Explorer on a daily basis with the cursor changing over links. You just don't like it because its different from what you're used to.

* The fact that when you tell KDE to put application menus at the top like MacOS...which is faster than slowing the cursor and pinpointing a menu in a floating window like in WindowsWorks fine on my machine. I'm guessing that you're not running 3.2...

* The seeming need for every new version of KDE to add five more sidebars, buttons, and features to KPanel/Konquerer/anything else beginning with K, instead of cleaning the interface and making things faster
Every release of KDE since 2.0 has gotten faster. Every release of KDE since 3.0 has become more streamlined.

I could go on and on. I don't get why it is so slow.
KDE isn't slow. Its got slow load-times for applications, but everything else is fast. In terms of user responsiveness, I find KDE to be faster than XP. In terms of redraw, KDE is even faster than XP. For example, try opening up two IE windows to Slashdot, one on top of the other. Resizing the top window will cause the bottom window blank --- for several seconds if you do it at the right speed. On my KDE, Konqueror doesn't do that.