I agree with most of what you've said. A few points... On Sat, Jun 30, 2001 at 12:07:20PM -0400, Sinzui Kobalt wrote: > In scenarios where the application doesn't support documents, > 'Application' should replace 'File'. Besides games, I can > think of CD players, system monitors, and instant messaging > that don't use documents. Allowing developers to > chose any menu name to replace 'File' introduces confusion > to users. When the user sees 'Application' as the first > menu, they should immediately know they are using a stateless > tool. Yes, I see your point here, and "Application" is a reasonable term. However, "Game" is already quite well established and I think it would be reasonable to give developers the choice of "File"/"Game"/"Application" rather than just "File"/"Application". > I think 'File > New' is fine in most circumstances, but I > think it may optionaly have a submenu. Some applications > support templates, and they may be listed under 'New'. Yep. Should developers have the option of putting the most commonly used "New foobar" item directly in the File menu instead of the submenu, like Mozilla? > Some > applications manage complex forms of data, such as Evolution, > which may create a message, a task, or something else. In > Evolution's case, it also has accelerator keys for each kind > of new thing, and uses 'Shift-Ctrl' with a key to create > the data type. Should there be a convention like 'Shift-Ctrl' > to create new data types? I'm not sure about Shift-Ctrl-<key>. We're already using that for the opposite of (or possibly related to) Ctrl-<key>. Also, I don't know that all "New foobar" items need keyboard shortcuts. They won't all be used very often. > Would adding 'app session' to 'Options' be smart? The stuff under the Options menu is very tentative. The issues surrounding configuration are really difficult. Before we progress any further with recommendations for the Options menu I really want to have some configuration guidelines to work from. And I confidently predict that getting a set of configuration guidelines will be a rather painful and unpleasant process. > do any apps > support options that live only for the session? Yes, there are some apps that have options that only last for the session or for as long as the document is open. I think my favourite app in terms of configuration is NEdit, but I don't know that NEdit's model is appropriate for all applications. colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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