On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 06:54:34PM -0400, Julian Missig wrote: > > > Do we agree that the *order* of buttons should be like that in the > > > second proposal? I believe that Apple's Mac guidelines back up the > > > button order chosen there. > > > > My document has it differently, more in line with Windows practice > > than Mac. However, I'm easy on this point. I see it as a matter of > > pragmatism versus idealism, the ideal being the Mac way and the > > reality being that 90% or more GNOME dialogs are currently done the > > Windows way. > > > > Yes, but we're not just supposed to document what GNOME and Windows > already do. The point is to make GNOME more usable. GNOME2 presents us > with the opportunity to get serious things changed. If you agree that > the ideal is the Mac way, then let's push to get this changed for > GNOME2. We need to get this changed in gtk2 *right now* if this is the > order we want. Ok, if you want to be idealistic about it I'm willing to go along with you on this. But here are some of the reasons for my original decision to go with current GNOME style: I value consistency. I believe that in calling for a change of all dialogs to a new style, we'd experience a long period of inconsistency. It's also possible that we'd fail to make the change and, in a worst case scenario, find ourselves with a permanent 50/50 split. It seems to me that perhaps a technical solution would be more appropriate: create a more semanticly-capable API in which it is possible to say "these are dialog buttons, so they should be arranged according to the user's prefs" and switch developers over to that API rather than to a hard-coded style. Despite my own preference for the Mac style, not everyone feels the same way. I've seen calls for Mac to go the Windows way for the sake of consistency with other environments. Lastly, I have no authority. I don't know who you guys are and I don't know how much authority you have, but it was painfully obvious that no one on g-g-l had the authority to say "Here are the guidelines. Follow them." colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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