Re: [HIG] Division Revision - First Part

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 02:27:43AM -0800, Seth Nickell wrote:
> >  1   Introduction
> >  2   Principles
> >  3   Presentation
> 
> I don't like this category's name, and I'm not sure I understand the
> logic behind it? Icons are rather seperate from, say, colours. The icon
> guidelines are meant to be read by those creating icons, not in general
> hackers. This organization is based on the assumption that the readers
> will be hackers, which doesn't seem always right. *shrug*

Icons often have color. There were a number of redundancies in the coverage
of topic related to presentation of data; the instances could easily fall out
of sync and leave us with contradictions. The children of this level are
"Layout and Appearance", and "Designing Effective Icons".  Pushing those up
a level seems fine to me.

> Things like "wording" also probably don't fall into a "presentation"
> section. Additionally, I don't think we should have *fewer* categories
> if that makes it hard to find things. The current number isn't hard to
> navigate (other than being sort of a random collection of items). I
> think a more useful metric is to look at section lengths and try to end
> up with approximately equal length sections. In this proposal,
> Presentation would be a huge section.

Terminology and Feedback would logically fall under presentation. If the
presentation group is split, then we'd have something like:

 1   Introduction
 2   Principles

 3   Layout and Appearance            \
 4   Terminology                      |___ (was Presentation)
 5   Designing Effective Icons        |
 6   Feedback                   --\   /
                                  |-- ( These seems out of order. )
 7   User Input                 --/

 8   Windows
 9   Controls
 10  Simple reality checks.

> Lets make our categories more specific so people can actually find what
> they're looking for when they read the HIG rather than having to descend
> into each section looking for items.

That's for what a table of contents and an index are.

> For example, where do toolbars go? Are they controls? I don't think of
> them as controls even though I guess I know they are widgets. Even more
> so with menus.

Widgets and controls are not the same. Many of the widgets we have are for
geometry management. They are invisible to the user, but their effects are
seen. I was looking at placing toolbars, menubars, and statusbars under the
primary window section. Afaik, they don't occur in any other type of window.

> >  4   User Input
> >  5   Windows
> 
> I think dialogues should be seperate from Windows.

Without your reasons, I can't argue. If they are split off, then we have:

 1   Introduction
 2   Principles

 3   Layout and Appearance                      \
 4   Terminology                                |___ (was Presentation)
 5   Designing Effective Icons                  |
 6   Feedback                                   /

 7   User Input

 8   Application Windows                        \
 9   Toolboxes, Palettes, and Utility Windows   |___ (was Windows)
 10  Dialogs                                    |
 11  Alerts                                     /

 12  Controls
 13  Simple reality checks.

> 
> >  6   Controls
> >  7   Simple Reality Checks
> 
> What about feedback?

idem

You failed to comment on the order, does it make sense to you?


Cheers,
Greg Merchan