Re: UI Guidelines -- What I'm doing

[Dan Mueth <dan eazel com>]

On Wed, 2 May 2001, colin z robertson wrote:

> On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:26:15PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > > If you have a keen interest in/experience with UI and GNOME, and are able to
> >                      xxxxxxxxxxxx
> > 
> > I hate to say this, because it is not as open sourcy as I like to be, but
> > UI design takes years of experience to do properly.  People with lots of
> > interest in UI design should definitely join the gnome-gui mailing list
> > and learn and discuss as much as they can, and I'm sure their
> > contributions will be valuable.  But for creating a first draft of the UI
> > guidelines, I think we only want people with a pretty serious background
> > in UI design.  (Well, we probably need to throw in somebody who is pretty
> > good at writing and DocBook/SGML.)
> 
> I can see where you're coming from with this, but you do understand,
> don't you, that it rules out someone like me.

I didn't realize that.

I'm afraid it rules out most of us, including myself.  I don't see this as
a bad thing though, since we can all voice our opinions both before the
work begins as well as during the review process when the team presents
various drafts for discussion and revision.

Note, for example, that even though I am the coordinator of the GNOME
Documentation Project, I am not part of the team that is writing the GNOME
[Writing] Style Guide.  I have never written a style guide before, so I am
leaving that to people who have written them in the past.  Actually, we
have 3 people who have written style guides in the past, and 2 people who
have been very active in the GDP for a very long time.  This way we
balanced people with a lot of experience in writing style guides with
people who have an intimate knowledge of GNOME and GNOME documentation.

We will probably want to strike a similar balance for the UI style guide
team.  Perhaps something like: 3 people who have done extensive UI design
work and contributed to UI style guides, 1 person who is great at
technical writing, and 1 person who has a lot of experience working with
the GNOME and Gtk+ widget sets.  This is sort of a dream-team
IMO.  (Actually, it wouldn't hurt to make sure we have somebody who is
process-oriented to keep people on-track and crack the whip when people
start dragging their heels. Hopefully one of the 5 can fill this
"coordinator" role.)

Note that the rest of us should not be cut out of the loop.  Major issues
should be discussed on the list before they go into the style guide, and
everything will be discussed and revised after the team has something for
us to look at.

Plus, there are many other tasks for the GUP, both regarding UI and non-UI
aspects.  It would be best if the UI guidelines does not consume
everybody's attention or else the other tasks will get neglected.  I'd
much rather see 5 people focussed on the UI guidelines completely, and
everybody else focussed on other projects.

Having said all of this, if somebody who doesn't fit into my description
of the dream team *really* wanted to join the team, I don't think that
would be a huge problem.  If I had the bandwidth and spare time, I would
definitely consider "snooping" on the committee to see how they function,
learn from them, and try to help out where I can.  I try to "snoop" on the
GNOME Style Guide team when I have time, although I don't even pretend to
be part of the committee or to tell them what the GNOME writing style
should be.

This is all just one person's opinion anyway.

Dan