[HIG] Another alternative

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

HIG folks --

As I've started writing my "must-change" document, I've been thinking 
of another alternative which I'm a little hesitant to suggest, but 
it's something I'd like to propose given where we are and my general 
instincts about where we're going.

Some of you may have read the review that Matthew Thomas (mpt) posted 
last week; you may also have noticed that he wrote an alternative set 
of guidelines which he referenced in his review.  This alternative, 
"Improving GNOME 2.0 for Humans," is at 
http://geocities.com/mpt_nz/ig2h.html

Reading through IG2H, I notice quite a few things with which I 
disagree, and which conflict with things that the HIG group has 
already decided on, more or less.  However, I also notice several 
other important factors:
1) IG2H is relatively short compared to the current HIG.  I count 12 
pages (without images, which are broken for some reason), as opposed 
to 50-some for the current HIG.
2) The recommendations in IG2H are clear and self-consistent.
3) IG2H is relatively complete; while it certainly does not cover the 
breadth that HIG covers (it does not include a section on icons, or 
on integrating apps with the desktop, or mouse interactions, for 
example), it covers what seem to be the crucial items that app 
developers should be concerned about at the moment, in a 
well-organized fashion.

I feel hesitant and a bit bad about suggesting this, given that many 
of us (me included) have spent a lot of time getting the current HIG 
to this point.  However, I see a lot more work ahead in the next few 
weeks, and to be honest I'm not sure we have the time.  So at the 
risk of offending the folks who have already put in a great deal of 
much-appreciated time and effort on the HIG, I will propose this: how 
about we stop work on the HIG as currently written, and instead 
decide to adopt I2GH as the current "mini-guidelines"?

The main reason I propose this is that I think IG2H is in a further 
state of completion than the HIG, so it would save us a significant 
amount of time to get to a final, postable version.  I also think 
that it would be far, far better to have a single document than for 
us to post our HIG and for mpt to also post his, and thus have two 
often-conflicting documents both purporting to be GNOME HI guidelines.

Here are some pre-requisites that I think would be necessary for this to work:
1) mpt would need to donate his document to the GNOME project, under 
the standard documentation license (whatever that is, I'm not sure at 
the moment).
2) mpt would need to be willing to make changes in his document in 
accordance with the group's reviews.  Alternately, he would need to 
be willing to have me or other members of the HIG team make 
changes/contribute additions.
3) we'd need to rewrite the doc in docbook if mpt doesn't already 
have a docbook version.

If we decide to go this route -- and I'd like to have opinions in on 
this as soon as humanly possible, as we need to get cracking either 
way -- the next step would be for all of us to write reviews of I2GH 
and submit them to this list, then discuss/debate changes.  Mpt or 
whoever volunteered would then rewrite the document to reflect those 
changes and post a version for further review by GNOME hackers and 
other usability folks; that feedback would then be integrated into 
the document and we'd have a final version.

I know that mpt is also working on a longer document, which could 
become a full HIG.  I really hate to throw out good work that has 
already been done, but I also hate to see huge amounts of duplicated 
effort, and conflicting documents that would be much better combined. 
Remember that the goal is to have some kind of GNOME HI Guidelines 
that will have a shot at convincing developers to make more 
consistent, usable applications.  The quicker we do that, the more 
likely it is that GNOME 2.0 will be a better, more usable environment 
in the near future.

Let me know what you think.
Adam
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