Re: [Usability] Re: GNOME 2 screenshot - GDict design

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 09:31:24PM +0200, Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:
> On Wed, 2001-11-28 at 17:56, Kevin Vandersloot wrote:
>     Hey Seth or other usabilty folks. I've always thought gdict had an ugly
>     interface. Anyone have any suggestions on how to improve it? I've started
>     some minimal changes, and I was considering removing the toolbar since it
>     seemed to me that you don't really need a toolbar to show 3-4 items.
>     Anyways, anyone care to offer a nice design?
> 
> Okay, this is a later reply but what the heck...
> 
> I personally use "wordinspect" which is available as a debian package.
> It is simple, elegant and nice. I use it with the sawfish "launchpad"
> where I can select a word, hit a hotkey, and it pops up the dictionary
> window for me for the word. 
> 
>     http://tigert.gimp.org/files/screenshots/wordinspect.png
> 
> Oh, and it does not have a preferences dialog :-) It is just plain gtk
> but works fine for my needs. Gdict could do something similar that is
> very simple:
> 
> .--------------------------------------------.
> | Lookup word: [_gnome_________________][go!]|
> |--------------------------------------------|
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |         word definition area               |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |                                            |
> |--------------------------------------------|
> |                                  [ Close ] |
> `--------------------------------------------'

No. The only Close button on any window ever should be the one provided by
the window manager. Done and Dismiss are also out - the only acceptable button
for a one button alert is OK, and no dialog should ever not present a Cancel
button and an OK-equivalent. But for two other points, this ascii is fine.

Replace "Lookup word:" with "Look up word:", or better still "Define:"; dict
can also define phrases, so "word" is misleading.

Replace "go!" with "Go".

> Since there is the applet already, the main window really can be just a
> dialog IMHO. . . .

No. That would be abusing a dialog. A dialog collects information from the
user to accomplish some end. This would be a utility window.

>        . . . So no toolbar or whatnot is needed really. And heck, just
> make it look good by default, we dont need gdict.themes.org :-)
> Wordinspect looks very slick and it is just black and white with some
> boldface here and there. Works great.

Sounds good to me. Command-line dict has an html output option, but it's been
disabled in Debian Sid for as long as I can recall. (Pending a rewrite - hey,
there's something to do!) Incidently, `PAGER=gless dict word` isn't too awful.

> The applet could use a label though, since the plain input field is a
> bit hard to understand. . . .

This applet and others could be implemented as a menu. The menu could be
called "Selection" and contain items such as "Define", "Check Spelling", 
"Web Search", "Calculate" and probably many more operations that could work
from selected text anywhere on the screen. I'd included a demo of this in
an proof-of-concept applet that I wrote; my applet wasn't proving that these
menu items could work, Alan Cox's googlizer already did that as did some
WindowMaker dock items (select a url on the screen and middle-click on a
mozilla dock item).

>                   . . . It could *maybe* popup a dialog the first time
> you start it, though I am not sure if it is a good idea. ("You can use
> the small text field on your panel to type a word to get dictionary
> lookup. Please note that it requires that you have an internet
> connection active. . . .

That would be incorrect. That gdict requires an internet connection is an error in gdict. I run my own dictionary server and my /etc/dict.conf reflects that;
if it didn't, my ~/.dictrc would. 

>              . . . [x] Dont show this again [Close]" or such)

The "Don't show this again" checkbox should be in the UI Hall of Shame by now.
It points to nothing that would allow the user to re-enable the showing. If
the user wouldn't want to do that, then why was the alert shown in the first
place?  See above about the Close button.

> ----------------------------------------------- -- -
> [ ] [ ] gnome panel  | Dictionary: [gnome__] |
> -------------------------------------------------- -- - 
> 
> Since some people want ultra compact panels full of all the possible
> gizmos, we could have a hidden gconf setting so you can set the label to
> be something else, and even empty if you want with gconftool.
> 
> Tuomas
> 
> PS. For launchpad, see
> http://www.linuxart.com/dir/stuff/configs/sawfish/launchpad/
> 
> PS2: If the above screenshot looks like crap for the text, it is because
> I use gdkxft with the "cleartype" hack enabled, but you have a non-LCD
> screen. It does RGB antialiasing with the LCD screen dots which does not
> work on CRT displays.. makes text look very colorful :-)
> 
> -- 
> :: :: Tuomas Kuosmanen  :: Art Director, Ximian :: ::
> :: :: tigert ximian com :: www.ximian.com       :: ::


Cheers,
Greg Merchan