Re: Wizards and W3 integration (was: Re: A road map for Oort Gnus)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden>
> Date: 16 Apr 2001 18:49:12 +0200
> 
> Let's take the simplest wizard possible: Starting reading news (and
> only news) with Gnus.  The wizard would ask (after checking the
> environment as determining that the user has no previous preference)
> -- "do you want to read news from a local spool or from a news
> server?"  If the user answers "local spool", the wizard would check
> whether there is a spool in any of the usual places, and if it finds
> one, it will suggest using that spool.  If not, it will tell the user,
> and let the user determine what to do.  (For instance, going back to
> choosing a news server.)  The user says "news server", the wizard will
> try pinging "news.<isp-name>" to see whether that exists, and if it
> does, present that as the choice, and if not, etc.

Thanks for a nice summary.

Given this description, I don't understand how did you get to
discussing HTML and W3.  This sounds like a possible extension of
Customize, plus some glue to go through several options in a
predefined order.  Am I missing something?

> Ideally, a wizard should let the user press "Ok" several times, and
> the user should then have something that works.

If the user needs just to press OK, then that user doesn't need a
wizard: the defaults should be automatic.

But this is nitpicking on my part, really.

> The name "setup wizard" sucks, though.

As does every buzzword Microsoft invents...

> "Setup Saint" would be much
> better.  "Let Saint Ignucious Guide You."

iGNUcious?