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

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Feb 5, 2008, at 8:41 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:
> ...
> 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]

A dialog is one way of asking for further input, but not the only way. 
For example, Nautilus's "Rename..." item correctly has an ellipsis, but 
doesn't use a dialog.

> We specifically exclude this case though:
>
>   [File->Frobnicate] -> [really?] -> [frobnicate]

(Eventually I think we should abolish this exception. As far as I can 
tell, it exists mainly because of the "Save changes before closing?" 
alert: changing "Close..." to "Close" whenever you saved a document, 
and back to "Close..." when you next changed it, would be too much of a 
hassle for programmers. This could be avoided, eventually, by 
abolishing the idea of "saving", which by itself would make 
confirmation alerts much rarer.)

> For Preferences or Page Setup, the dialog is what you're
> intending to do.

I think the HIG's recommendation of "Preferences" over "Preferences..." 
is also a bug. <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169447>

With the exception of user interface designers, nobody ever intends to 
"do a dialog".

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/