Re: [HIG] Naming



On Wednesday, November 7, 2001, at 03:52 AM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

On 07Nov2001 03:58AM (-0600), Gregory Merchan wrote:

As you may have guessed, I don't like Human Interface Guidelines because
it isn't clear what the interface is between; put another way,
"Interfacing with humans sounds like fun!" Perhaps more frightful -
"Humans have interfaces? Do they accept RJ-45 connectors?"


The complete title is GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. Therefore it's
about GNOME interfacing with humans.

As I said before, I continue to believe that GNOME Human Interface Guidelines is the best title, and unless everybody else besides Maciej feels that this is too "Apple-like" for comfort, I would continue to stick with it.

All amusing jokes aside, the usability community tends to be pretty consistent in trying to include "human" as much as possible -- the field is called Human-Computer Interaction (or Computer-Human Interaction if you happen to be the ACM, but that's a whole 'nother rant :) Human Interface is an accurate description and very common terminology for what we're talking about. Every other way of stating it ("User Interface", "Usability", or just "Interface") has additional ramifications which at best I find uncomfortable and at worst I find unacceptable. If hackers don't understand the term "Human Interface," (or, as Maciej noted, "GNOME Human Interface,") well, it's time for them to learn about it.

As Kathy said, "Standard" is way too strong for this, and "Style Guide" is too weak. So "Guidelines" is the right term. Hence, we are left with the current title, and so I vote for keeping it as is.

Adam




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