Re: [Usability] Re: My (ongoing) analysis of the proposed modules

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

(desktop-devel-list dropped)

On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 06:23:52PM -0400, Noah Levitt wrote:
> On Sat, May 10, 2003 at  8:00:00 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > 
> > Yeah, this makes sense. Perhaps it would be better to use terminology that
> > within the problem domain: "Increase/Decrease font size"?
> 
> I called it that originally, but I thought Zoom would make
> more sense to users. It means exactly the same thing that it
> means in mozilla/galeon/epiphany, after all.

I think that's a bug there too. :-) Zoom only changes the font size; it does
not increase image size. On this point, I think Microsoft got it right with
View->Fonts->{size list}

A quick review, some of which has surely been mentioned already:

"Charmap" is not a word. Try "Map".

This menu has only one item. That's not a good sign, but I don't have any
 suggestions about it at this time.

Change "Quit" to "Close". (Pick any flamewar about Quit v. Close for why.)

"Expand/Collape All" All what? Why is this a check item?

For "Zoom In" and "Zoom Out" see my comments above.

"Zoom Mode" looks like it'd be related to "Zoom In" and "Zoom Out".
Why not remove the option and leave it on? Hide the zoom window when focus
is lost.

Make "Unicode Details", "Annotations and Cross References", and
"CJK Ideograph Details" the head items of their option menus.

Just leave "Snap Column to Power of Two" on.

"Find..." et al. I can't tell what this does.

"Hex Code Point..." For most people, a hex is a curse, not short for
hexadecimal. Inside the dialog, it's a "Unicode code point." I still don't
know what exactly a "code point" is; unfortunately, I don't know a nice way
to convey the idea either. A contrained entry would be better than changing
the dialog text. That may require a modified GtkSpinButton.

"Character in Clipboard"  This item is very odd to me, perhaps because the
clipboard usually has more than one character.

Can the font style menu be changed into two toggle buttons, Bold and Italic?
I see that "Regular" is sometimes "Roman" and "Italic" is sometimes "Oblique".
I also see things like "Light", "Medium", "Demi", and "Book". It looks like
there are many names for the same thing. Shouldn't typesetting be considered
a corner case here and whatever fine distinctions there may be left to a
typesetting application?

The map is very large, so scrolling is imprecise. Perhaps this could be
broken into multiple pages?

The information about characters appears to be editable, but my changes
don't stick. This is a relief. ;-) The horizontal scrollbar won't go away.

The "Text to copy" field and "Copy" button seem odd to me too.

That's my quick review.

Cheers,
Greg