Re: Meaning of "Close" in non-modal dialogs (was: Re: gnome-stock pixmaps)

[Markus Fleck <fleck informatik uni-bonn de>]

Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> I think we should not put "Close" into the lower left hand corner,
> though -- if I have never though about the difference between "Ok" and "Close"
> I bet there are plenty of others who don't either.

Assuming that "affirmative" actions are usually put at the
left hand side of a dialog box (like the Macintosh style
guides suggest, AFAIK), and the right-hand side buttons
get you out of the dialog in a "non-destructive" manner,
I think that in the case of our "toolbox-like" dialog,
it should look like

  [Apply]   [Undo]   [Close]

Whereas the typical non-toolbox "modal" dialog would be:

  [OK]  [Cancel]

or optionally

  [OK]  [Preview/Test]  [Cancel]

We should really decide on a set of general ("high-level")
style guidelines for this. Or at least adopt one of the
many existing style guides here. Both for the names and
meanings of buttons, and for their positions. Although
I am in fact not sure whether it is necessary to specify
button positions for anything but basic ("standard")
dialogs, because most GNOME apps seem to have sufficiently
complicated (or sophosticated :-) dialogs that would not
easily fit into a general button positioning scheme.

Yours,
Markus.