Re: interface tag

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

Eric Baudais wrote:

> There are intances when the GUI* tags do not apply.  I'm thinking of 
> specifically marking up the text "dialog box", "scroll bar", "text box", 
> "drop list", and "tool bar."  These are part of the GUI, but do not apply 
> under any of the GUI* tags.  For some of these items you could use their name 
> with <guilabel>, but when you use these terms then the <interface> tag 
> applies.  
> 

Terms such as "dialog box", "text box", "scrollbar", "drop list" and "toolbar" 
are all standard interface components, and as such should not need any kind of 
emphasis. The labels, names, and other values attached to these components do 
require tags, to draw the attention of the user. If we start tagging the 
standard component words, as well as their associated labels, then we will have 
a surfeit of tags and corresponding overload of emphasis in the final output. 
There is a danger that the emphasized text will seriously outweigh the remaining 
prose text, and hence devalue the original intention in assigning emphasis to 
certain text strings in the first place. Usability will decrease, not increase. 

In any case, as far as I can ascertain the interface tag was never intended to 
be used as a tag around such standard component words anyway. Why should this be 
the case now? 

Pat