Re: actual proposal

[Tom Vogt <tom lemuria org>]

Bowie Poag <bjp@primenet.com> wrote:
> > Why:    Apart from consistency, you never  know which windowmanager people
> >         are using. They might even  be using none at all (running X on an
> >         older laptop for a single purpose often is done that way. for screen
> >         real-estate reasons more than performance). Therefore, you should
> >         never rely on external means to close popup-windows. So you need
> >         to provide a means yourself and this has to be consistent with other
> >         applications or  the  user will  be hunting around for the close
> >         button until frustration.
> 
> "Close" is ambiguous. An [ OK ] button closes a window. So does a [
> Cancel ] button. 

first of all, "Close" is not in the very least ambiguous. it does exactly
what it states - closing the popup-window. I do not think you can get much
clearer.
second, I pointed that out a few times by now, this is mostly just a
misunderstanding. read the next lines:
> > How:    Every window that requires no interaction (dialogs are treated in
> >         chapter X, item Y)  has to have a  single button labeled "Close".
see? this is for popup-windows only. anything that requires "Ok" and
"Cancel" buttons is a dialog by my terminology and is not subject to this at
all.
I really should have put this sentence in much earlier to make it clearer.
my bad.


> Unnecessary and unenforcable. Depending upon the context in which the
> pop-up appears, something either must be OK'ed, or Cancelled.

this is the same misunderstanding. an example: the "About..." popup. you do
not "ok" an about, do you? you don't cancel it either. same thing with error
messages - have you never wondered why you HAVE to hit "ok" in response to
"really bad error, I'll eat your disk now" ?

THESE are the cases I was talking about. the cases with (quote) "no
interaction", where you just need a way to get rid of the window after
reading its contents.
I do consider "ok'ing" or canceling something as an interaction, in case
that part was unclear.



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