Re: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Tom Tromey <tromey creche cygnus com>]

StyleGuide> "Documentation for the application should be written using
StyleGuide> DocBook"

Paul> "... and must provide at least a manpage and preferably html
Paul> documentation.  (If html documentation is provided, the manpage
Paul> may simply be a stub telling how to access the real
Paul> documentation.)"

We should be able to render properly written DocBook documentation
into man pages and HTML.  So I'd suggest that nobody bother with
either of these formats, unless and until we discover that DocBook
can't cope (I doubt this will happen).


Paul> Also, some applications are a more logical fit for a modal
Paul> dialog rather than a traditional menu-adorned window.  These
Paul> should contain at least one of Close/Okay/Cancel buttons, and if
Paul> a menubar is not provided, a Help button.

I think that if an app fits the dialog (not modal, just dialog) style,
then it be prohibited from having a menu bar.  The two things just
seem at odds.  (As an example of this kind of app, consider the
mouse-properties program.)

Should such apps have About buttons as well?

"Ok" should actually be capitalized "OK" (is that the nittiest nit, or
what??).

I like Apply buttons on dialogs of this sort.  The Apply button should
be ghosted until the user makes a change.


StyleGuide> "All operations that have a deterministic time to
StyleGuide> completion that lasts more than three seconds should
StyleGuide> indicate progress using a progress bar."

Paul> Should this be configurable (system-wide, per user) instead of
Paul> arbitrarily three seconds?  (I don't like to see progress bars
Paul> unless the operation takes more like ten seconds.)

This will sound really nutty, but: we should hide this functionality
behind some API in libgnomeui.  Then in the future we'll be free to
change the implementation to (I kid you not) contact the CORBA
"progress service".

This service could be configured in many different ways:

* # of seconds until pop up
* Pop up a dialog for each progress status
* Don't pop up a dialog, but display all ongoing tasks in a single
  window somehow

Obviously this is something we probably won't do at the beginning.

Just a random thought...

Tom