Re: [HIG] Label alignment

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> Note also that I fully hope and expect Coleen's sections (along with
> everybody else's) to be subject to a final rigorous review and editing
> before we go live with a 1.0 HIG release... however it seemed like the
> easiest way to make them available for this process was just to convert
> and integrate them for now.

Probably not, other than what you or I provide. At this point the most
effective thing we can do with the HIG is not get it perfect, but get it
out. I'm looking at release in about 1-1.5 weeks now. We can release 1.2
in two months after we get a bunch of reviews and change some things.

Its important to remember that our work situation differs substantially
from, say, the Java guidelines, Apple guidelines, or Microsoft
guidelines. Big companies publish a spec, go to a lot of trouble to
publish a book, and then people can stamp "HIG 1 compliant" on their
products. By the very nature of this they can only change the spec every
couple of years without getting people mad. Also, because they have
virtually no interaction with most of the specification's users, its
hard to make changes in an effecient manner once momentuum has begun.

I expect the HIG to work more like a "GNOME best usability practices"
document for the near future rather than a rigid formal
specification[1]. We will inevitably change items, and where we make
changes we can go through the desktop and file bugs where they need to
be filed, attach patches where the changes can be done in glade, and
suggest changes to maintainers where they are on IRC. In Free Software
the first few releases of something (even libraries) change quickly, and
morph until they solidify.

What I'd like to see is a 1.0 release that throws most of the content
into something presentable enough to post an announcement on the web
site and major mailing lists, and then releases every month or two to
reflect changes, decisions, additions, etc. I'd also like to consider
conducting post-2.0 HIG stuff on usability@ rather than a small private
list like this one. This would probably slow it down, but might bait
some worthwhile contributions, would get more people thinking about the
issues and problems (so maybe we'll get some ideas off that), but most
importantly will provide some usability education to list members.

-Seth

[1] of course I don't intend to preclude beating reticent maintainers
over the head with it *wink*