Re: [Usability] Terminology change: Reduce Newism

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On 11 Jul 2003, Christian Neumair wrote:

> Date: 11 Jul 2003 20:22:04 +0200
> From: Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Terminology change: Reduce Newism
>
> We usually use actions as menu items, which are a bit of commands, e.g.
> "insert": "hey, computer, insert that!" or "save as": "hey, computer,
> save that!") which I really like because infinitive/imperative verbal
> forms (the same in English) are very pictorial pictorial. Now we've got
> several exceptions: "New Window", "New Folder", etc. I'll refer to this
> terminology as "Newism".

I believe there are cases where it would make sense to drop some of
the newism, but I dont think it would be appropriate to do so wholesale
and not just because of it being what people are used to, and I believe
that consistantly alone is reason enough to keep it in most cases.

I dont use computer much in other languages (almost never) but New and the
Ctrl+N keybinding go together.  If you drop the Newisms then it hurts
learnability because the logic for the Ctrl+N shortcut disappears.

Do you use Gnome in English or German?  I am missing something because
English is my first langauge?  Do you think this change might
work better in languages other than English?

Often localisations are free to choose clearer or more verbose
translations if they are appropriate to that language so long as the
changes are made within good technical style writing.

> I recently noted that a Nautilus string was changed to "Create
> Folder"/

Then I will need to file a report asking them to revert that.

> "Create Launcher" which I prefer a lot over "New Folder"/"New

I had hoped they whole Launcher terminalogy would be dropped long ago and
replaced with "Shortcut" (was it Anna or was it the Sun usability review
that pointed out how this confused users?).  I dont really appreciate the
distinction of a Launcher being a shortcut/link to a program.

I strongly feel that terminology like Launchers instead of Shortcuts and
Druids instead of Wizards were just changes for the sake of being
different that actually harmed usability.

> Launcher", because they begin with a verb and therefore increase
> consistency. Same for "New Window" that has been replaced by "Open New
> Window", which doesn't crop the "New", but at least makes the string
> more pictorial by adding a verb at the beginning.

If you really want to mess with the English language it must be
possible to use New as an imperative verb if "Renew" is a verb.  (I had
really better check that in a dictionary).

If you prefer it could also be said that it is "Make New" and the verb is
implied, the same way in English it you can have a valid one word sentence
such as "Rubbish" where the necessary "That is" is implied.
(Thanks go to my favourite English teacher Greg Collins, I was paying
attention even if it didn't seem like it.)


> Nautilus introducted that terminology, I think it would be a good thing
> if the rest of GNOME (and hopefully, even GTK+, in it's fileselector)
> followed it, too.

It was a well considered and interesting idea but I must firmly disagree
and I hope that I can convince you not to make this change.

While the greater internal consistancey might be worthwhile and you might
be able to make this change in a few places I dont think you can
underestimate more than Ten years of most software on the major desktops
doing things this way.  File, New is what users expect from most programs,
even if it is more appropriate in some cases to have Game, New have you
ever noticed that this justifiable inconsistancy is quite disconcerting?
I think the change to be "File Create" would be strangley confusing to
less frequent computer usersand not worth the need for users to make a
minor mental adjustment to it, even if it is only a very small
adjustement.

> Examples of Newism can be found in Epiphany where we have "New Window",
> "New Tab" and "New Bookmark".

In many situations Tabs are about window management, you are not so much
creating a New Tab as you would create a page or a sheet in workbook as
creating a Tabbed View.
I do believe the are potentially cases where Newisms could be removed.

You may have noticed in Abiword that we dont have "New Header" or "Insert
Header" we just have "Edit Header" and if one does not exist already we do
the obvious thing and create one for you to edit.

Doing it differently from Microsoft Word does hurt us in terms of
consistancey but I am convinced that in this case our way is substantially
better and more direct.

Actually now that I think about it we might just need to remove the verb
entirely becuase of ugly redundancey of having the menu Edit, then an menu
item repeating the word Edit again.  The devil is in the details.

> regs,
>  Chris

(Chris aka Manny? I'm thinking of the same Chris aren't I?)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

PS If anyone else is brave enough or masochistic enough to try and
encourage better usability in the GIMP I would appreciate even the moral
support.  I believe that better usability in the GIMP will be largely tied
to more and better functionality, usabilty by stealth.  ;)