Re: Common Save Confirmation Dialogue

[Marc O'Morain <marc omorain gmail com>]

On 5/9/05, Mark McLoughlin <markmc redhat com> wrote:
> Best to discuss this on gtk-devel list, really.

With respect, I disagree - if a consensus is reached, the
implementation would indeed take place using GTK. However, I feel that
the issue itself is broader than just GTK. The  discussion centres
around usability, the HIG, applications with multiple document
interfaces, and how far the GTK toolkit should be extended to aid
platform specific (GNOME) application development.


On 5/9/05, Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow taliesin ca> wrote:
> The gnumeric save confirmation dialog has 5 buttons (unless only a
> single unsaved file is open) since its users do not want to have to
> answer 10 dialogs just because they have 10 related workbook opens at a
> time.  So this proposed dialog would not be usabale by the Gnumeric
> project.

You are correct - there are some applications that use multiple
documents in this way, where the common dialogue box would not be
useful. Meld is an example of another application that has a dialogue
box that offers to save multiple documents at once.

> And whatever the HIG says, our users told us that the choice `cancel'
> when it was used in gnumeric in that dialog did not have a clear
> meaning.

The wording is a little confusing. I myself would recommend longer
labels on the three buttons. This is a little verbose, but more clear:

[Discard Changes] [Return to Gnumetric Without Closing] [Save Document]


Has anyone else any comments?

Best Regards,

-- 
Marc O'Morain