Re: [HIG] [Fwd: [Usability]Question on Multiple Document Interfaces]

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 04:18, Seth Nickell wrote:
> Hey Luis,
> 
> On Wed, 2002-08-21 at 17:02, Luis Villa wrote:
> > -----Forwarded Message-----
> > 
> > Along the same lines, what exactly *are* the usabilty problems with MDI?
> 
> (I'll try to address this later, but it'll take some time, and I need to
> work on that whole thread....... I took a vacation from mail yesterday
> :-)

Well earned by all acounts :)

> > 2) Calling things .0 when they've had little/no outside commentary
> > feedback is... not great form :) Do you think we'll see a 1.1 with any
> > useful feedback incorporated in the next month or two? [Not that I
> > expect tons of useful feedback, but what there is it would be good to
> > get in and get in quickly- release early and often is good for docs too
> > :) 
> 
> We're planning to release the HIG about every month or two for the
> forseeable future.

Great, with one caveat ;) Note that at some point, like everything else,
we have to have detailed changelogs and something resembling 'API
freeze' at some point. It's not fair to expect developers to hit a
moving target, and they won't even try if they don't think it's
basically stable. 

> > 3) I'm really sorry I ran out of time to comment on it before release.
> > The line above worries me- from what I've had time to read so far, this
> > is a very solid document, but there are parts where it needs to persuade
> > and educate hackers and it doesn't- it takes for granted things hackers
> > don't know and want to know. I hope to give this a marketing-to-hackers 
> > review soon- will that be useful/acceptable? 
> 
> Yes, though obviously commentary from actual hackers about marketability
> would be most useful ;-) Part of the reason that I've always pushed for
> including the reasoning behind each guideline (some hig people would
> prefer a slicker document that just laid down the law) is because
> rational argument is very important for marketing to hackers. 

Cool. :) Glad we're at least on the same page about motivation. :)

> That said, we also need to work a lot on making the document more
>  skimmable for hackers that have accepted the document and just want to
>  get in, get the info, and get on with business. One idea on this front
>  is to do some docbook mods/magic to a to-the-point document with
>  little links next to each guideline that contain an explanation of why
>  the guideline was chosen over other alternatives.

That would be really cool if it was actually doable. [I know that 130+
pages or whatever it is now is a pretty intimidating chunk of text.]

Luis