Re: HIG says "Page Setup" not "Page Setup..."

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 15:29 -0300, Claudio Saavedra wrote:
> El lun, 04-02-2008 a las 18:09 +0100, Luca Ferretti escribió:
> > I've just opened bugs against eog, evince, evolution and gedit to remove
> > the trailing ellipsis from File->Page Setup menu entry. Bugs are 514352,
> > 524354, 514355, 514356.
> > 
> > If you know other applications that need to be fixed, please let me
> > know.
> 
> I'm not completely sure that's a bug. HIG says
> 
>         Label the menu item with a trailing ellipsis ("...") only if the
>         command requires further input from the user before it can be
>         performed. Do not add an ellipsis to items that only present a
>         confirmation dialog (such as Delete), or that do not require
>         further input (such as Properties, Preferences or About).
>         
> In order to setup the page properties, further input is required from
> the user. That's completely different from "Preferences", where the
> semantics of the action tells you that you will be presented with the
> preferences dialog, and nothing more.
> 
> Of course, I'd ask the usability experts some advice on this.

To me, the ellipsis indicates that you're going to see a
dialog that's sitting *between* you and the action you've
selected.

  [File->Print...] -> [dialog] -> [printer whirrrrs]
  [File->Save As...] -> [dialog] -> [icon appears in Nautilus]

We specifically exclude this case though:

  [File->Frobnicate] -> [really?] -> [frobnicate]

For Preferences or Page Setup, the dialog is what you're
intending to do.  If it has an ellipsis, I think of this:

  [File->Page Setup...] -> [dialog] -> [what happen???]

Looking at the Print, Frobnicate, and Page Setup examples
here, I'd create three classifications.  These are based
on what you could replace the affirmative button text with.

 1) "I've given you what you need, now go do what I wanted."
 2) "Yes, I'm serious.  Sheesh, shut up already."
 3) "All right, that's it.  Back to the application."

Of these, we only put an ellipsis on (1).

This analysis was brought to you by my judo grip on the
English language.

--
Shaun