Re: Right-justified help menu?

[Gregory Merchan <merchan baton phys lsu edu>]

Jim Cape wrote:
"Well, right justification of the Help menu may make it easier for you to find
because you are used to it, but it doesn't for ex-users of every other operating
system on the planet."

Alan Shutko wrote:
"Not Mac users, iirc."

Macintosh, pre-95 Windows, and CDE all place the help menu on the far right. On
the Mac this is enforced by having the universal menubar. Pre-95 Windows was a
knock-off of Motif Window manager and the Motif style. Motif guidelines (2.1,
maybe others?) require the help menu item to be right justified; this goes for CDE
also, of course. Windows 95 et seq. are the only systems I know of that pack
all the menu items on the left.

sungod wrote:
"Can you please point us to research you or someone else has done on this
topic?"

Not yet. I'm going to check some hard copy UI guides later today. So far I've
only found a Motif style guide and a KDE style RFC. The relevant links are:

http://nscp.upenn.edu/aix4.3html/motif/motifpg/motifpg87.htm

http://www.anime.net/~goemon/kde_rfc.html

The only thing I have seen WRT preferences and settings is a complaint against
having both. I think it was at:

http://www.mackido.com

--
Greg Merchan

(In searching with Google I found this is an old topic on this list. I'll have
to go through the archives soon.)