Re: beast crux-linux port available

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 henning_sprang@gmx.de wrote:

> Hy,
>

[side note, could you start to insert newlines into your text, please?]

> I feel and think this isn't a good way to solve this Problem  - for me i can tell you of my experience, that i was confused, because i had to open each three of them  to see that there are really three times  with the same function behind it - it could have been too, that there are different "view" prfereneces, "file" preferences and edit preferences options - that is not clear to be seen! On the other side, me and for sure every other user that ever used more than two programs is pretty well used to the experience, that the location of the preferences option varies from program to program, so i know, i must search for it as well in "file", "edit", "view" and other menus, so i am pretty used to it - in fact, i think there are more programs having preferences under "tools" than under view, so you had to put it there, too, to follow your idea comletely - sorry for that rant, you know, i respect xou very much for the amount and quality of work you put in that "animal".

heh, you don't need to agree with everything i do, just because
i write software you use ;)
i'm not surprised you were confused. since there's no canonical place
for preferences, there's not a single thing i can do which causes
*nobody* be confused.
it's interesting you purposely tried out all three locations though,
to figure whether there're differences between them. i must say, if
i was to put three different preferences dialogs under three equally
named menu items, that'd prolly count as *very evil* in my book ;)
(but of course you couldn't tell before trying each out, i see that ;)

> In my opinion the qickest and best solution, that doesn't need further
> thinking and searching would be, to put the preferences in the first Menu from the left, which could be, theoretically, the first somebody tries. If one wants to put some research into it, the place where most other programs have it - if you're interested i't go for it and make a count of some commonly used programs, you could name or i would chose from those i know they have lots of users.

evaluating other programs sounds like a good idea. i usually go for the
same before i decide on certain things for beast. for preferences
specifically, i couldn't find a common scheme where programs put it,
so it ended up in three different places.
note that, "many programs" isn't the best thing to look for though,
you should try to make sure to you look at programs that can be
considered relevant, e.g. mozilla, because many people work on it and
use it, or evolution, konqueror or the gimp (there you prolly want to
look at 1.0, 1.2 and 2.0, they changed dialog layout at some point) for
the same reason. but also, it'd be interesting to note where recent windows
versions put it, or Mac OS X programs, especially since these are the
big companies that actively pump money into user interface research.

e.g. taking a look at powerpoint which i currently have access to, it has:
- File/Properties... to adjust prioperties of the currently opened document,
- Extras/Options... which comes closest to beasts preferences. it openes
  a dialog with a notebook to adjust various settings about program behaviour.
- Extras/Adaptions... (or Extras/Adjustments..., it's actually in german here
  and says Extras/Anpassen...) which pops up a dialog to configure the
  toolbars. one notebook page says "Options" though, which is a tight bit
  confusing if you mean to find that page again and come across Extras/Options...
  first...

and for the record, IE has Extras/Internet Options...

> It's late and I'm tired, so i am too lazy to search for it now, but what do the Gnome HIG say about that? If they say nothing it would be something that should be solved there, or even at a higher level like
> freedesktop.org or something.

this can very well be part of the GNOME HIG or the KDE
style guide, and if not, it'd prolly be good for them
to have such a recommendation, yes.

so, if you want to do some further research to find out a better
place for the beast preferences, please go for it!

>
> Henning
>

---
ciaoTJ