Re: [Usability] Wording of Error Dialogs

[Seth Nickell <snickell gmail com>]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:16:40 +0100, Calum Benson <calum benson sun com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2004-06-23 at 18:50, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> 
> > Should the
> > primary text end with a point or not? Or why should the primary text of
> > an error or warning box not contain one?
> 
> My personal feeling is that it shouldn't... I like to equate the primary
> text to a newspaper headline.  The HIG should certainly be more specific
> here though (filing a bug would help us remember to fix this).
> 
> > Shouldn't the string "/floppy"
> > also be put between quotation marks?
> 
> Again the HIG probably ought to say something here.  I'd probably say
> that filenames and pathnames should be quoted when used in
> normally-terminated sentences, otherwise it can be hard to tell whether
> the punctuation is part of the filename or not.  For primary alert text
> though, if we agree that there should be no punctuation at the end, then
> I think quotes can make it look a bit clunky.

The string "/floppy" should never show up in the interface. We
shouldn't be showing file names using Unix path format.

-Seth