Re: any easy way of having a YES/NO dialog return a 1 or 0?

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jan 2012, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
>
> > 2012/1/17 David NeÄas <yeti physics muni cz>:
> >
> > > Hence
> > >
> > > > Â Â"Are you sure you want to quit without saving ?"
> > > >
> > > > Should typically have the answers: "Save" "Quit"
> > >
> > >
> > > is nonsense. ÂThis question should not occur in a sensible GUI no matter
> > > what answers are offered.
> >
> >
> > You are arguing that sensible guis should allow you to quit without
> > warning the user that there is unsaved data ?
> >
> > What do you propose instead ?
>
>
> How about: "Do you want to save your data?" Y/N

Yes it makes your life easier as a programmer to imagine that
every question can have a simple boolean answer which can
be defined as "yes" or "no", it allows you to write dialogs with
one-liner macros and such.

When your first language is english it almost makes sense to
think this way, most of the time.

Lets not start to imagine that what is easiest for the programmer
is the most friendly to the user.

No, not all english yes/no questions can be translated into a question
that has a yes/no answer in every language. I wouldn't bet
that yes/no is a suitable response to a question in most languages
either.

Also, consider that the yes/no text in a dialog is generally translated
separately from the question, as specially in the case that you
use stock responses built into GTK+, the translator then does not have
the option to look at the dialog and translate one "yes" differently
than another, depending on the context of the question.

Anyway, I'm a bit taken aback that after years of steering away
from these yes/no dialogs, we're actually arguing this at all.

Most modern user interface guidelines have explicit clauses
against this already, a quick 5 minutes of grepping the interweb
gives me:
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/9946/should-i-use-yes-no-or-ok-cancel-on-my-message-box
http://www.user-interface.org/2005/12/23/dialog-boxes/

I know there was a clause against this in the GNOME HIG, but I've
spent enough effort here already...

Cheers,
         -Tristan