Re: Unify things across GNOME Office (UI & icons)

[Sven Herzberg <herzi abi02 de>]

Am Mon, 2002-06-24 um 03.03 schrieb Alan Horkan:
> How close are are applications to being compliant with the Gnome 2 HIG?
> It should be possible to be mostly compliant but I think this is harder
> than it sounds to be 100% compliant with the guidelines, the devil is in
> the details.
> 
> While I am interested in getting Abiword to follow most of the HIG in some
> places Abiword will probably break it.  Abiword has to try and fit in on a
> variety of platforms.  Abiword generally* uses the same keybindings as
> Microsoft Word (although Abiword also supports emacs or vi keybinding
> modes) worst case scenario Abiword could have another slightly differnet
> keybinding scheme just to be 100% HIG compatible.
IMHO it's more important to have a GNOME-wide way of keybinding. I know
that your aim is to make it easy to 'convert' from MS Word to Abiword,
but there is NO standard for Shortcuts on Windows Systems (there are
only vendor-specific stanards - Corel has got very different shortcuts
than MS IIRC). So in my opinion a GNOME-wide standard would be a better
aim.

> I would like for there to be a common submenu at File, New (like open
> office does.  i am/was pleasantly surprised that Ctrl+N opens a new window
> of the current type which is what i hoped would happen, but i digress).
> This would probably be a relatively easy way to quickly give more
> consistency to the menus without interfering too much.
> 
> I think one of the thinks like to confuse users is the naming scheme and I
> suggest that perhaps we do something like:
>   Gnome Spreadsheet (Gnumeric)
>   Gnome Word Processor (Abiword)
>   Gnome Presentation (Agnubis) [or alternatively Slide Show]
Referring to the HIG, it shouldn't contain GNOME or X in the names (as
Agnubis and Gnumeric implement this already). So these should be:
	Abiword Word Processing
	Agnubis Presentations
	Gnumeric Spreadsheet
(even if i think that 'Word Processor (Abiword)' and so on would be
better.)

> (et cetera, und so weiter, and so on,  localised as appropriate).
> 
> The less time the users have to spend figuring out what the
> program name means more time to getting the task done.
> 
> I had already typed this and then found this link which says suggests
> Abiword Word Processor, Gnumeric Spreadsheet, Nautilus File Manager
> etc. but it is talking specifically about the Global Menu I the same
> reasoning should apply widely across Gnome Office.
> 
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig/desktop-integration.html#menuentries
> 
> As for Splash screens (and about dialog graphics) how about taking the
> example of OpenOffice.org and use only one single Gnome Office splash
> screen across all Gnome Office Applications.  (This would be just for when
> the applications are distributed collectively as Gnome Office.)
IMHO this is a great idea.

> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig/desktop-integration.html#menuentries
> 
> We might also consider one single in the Help menu add a menu item About
> Gnome Office, and either have one single about dialog or for Gnome Office
> or have it in addition to the existing About dialog.  Abiword currently
> has a menu item About Gnome Office, which link to the gnome office
> web pages (but only in the Gnome Build).
> 
> Are there any plans for shared clipart?  I have some ideas but I would
> like to know if anything is already being worked on.

Back to icons (which can be done most easily i think): can't we open a
GIMP contest (http://contest.gimp.org) for a set of icons?

--
sven