Re: [HIG] Mini-Guidelines content

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Adam Elman wrote:

> This is important, but I think we should keep it fairly simple; we
> don't want that to overshadow the guidelines content itself.
> 
> I'll send a separate note with a proposal for this.

The discussion on this that followed was certainly useful, but a little
lower level than I'd had in mind when I suggested a "styleguide for the
styleguide"!  I was thinking more in terms of something like a suggested
format that we could use for each section.

For example, on the last set of guidelines I worked on, each sub-topic
followed something like this format:

Sub-topic name
Description of sub-topic (1 paragaph)
Screenshot/diagram
Further description of diagram if required (max. 2 paragraphs)
Heading "Guidelines"
Bulleted list of "required" guidelines
Bulleted list of "optional" guidelines
More detailed explanation of guidelines, including further tables and
diagrams if necessary (max. 1 page)

(Of course there were enclosing formats for "topic", which could contain
any number of sub-topics, and "chapter", which could contain any number
of topics).  This sort of thing could obviously be worked up into an
HTML/SGML/DocBook template... I was just concerned that we're racing
away to come up with contents lists and even start writing stuff before
we're actually sure of the type and depth of information we want to
provide.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems