Re: [HIG] proposed policy issues

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 12:51:01PM +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> Calum Benson wrote:
> 
> > I'm happy enough to simplify the View/Toolbar menu stuff, as long as we
> > still specify a consistent way of doing it.
> 
> As as sidenote, I would add that my (minor) concern about moving the
> Customize Toolbar and Text/Icons/Text+Icons options off a View>Toolbars
> menu and into the Preferences dialog is that Preferences dialogs
> inevitably vary widely between applications.  So we'll end up with a
> couple of standard functions that are common to most/all apps but will
> appear somewhat differently in each of them.  
> 
> If anyone can think of a good way around that, please let me know so I
> can write about it in the Toolbars section... do we need to go as far as
> specifying what the relevant controls should look like in the
> Preferences dialog?

Templates. Consider a file properties dialog in one file manager. For any
file the particulars are different and some special files may have a page
more or a page less (assuming here that there are pages of some sort); but
the pages that do exist, modulo data, are the same.

Similary, we have a few standard dialogs in the toolkit. We could do the
same for properties of apps (i.e., what the settings are according to user
preferences, insofar as they have the options. ;-) George Lebl's PonG goes
part of the way towards making these consistent. We could design the pages
and then have an API and code written to simplify this.

I don't think these are a good target for the current HIG. There will surely
be much controversy and we don't want that diluting the guidelines we have.

> 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
> _______________________________________________

Cheers,
Greg Merchan