[Usability] Re: Stock Page Setup

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005, Boris Goldowsky wrote:

> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:05:51 -0500
> From: Boris Goldowsky <boris alum mit edu>
> To: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: Stock Page Setup  [was Re: [Usability] Stock Items: forming
>     a plan of sorts]
>
> On Tue, 2005-02-15 at 12:24 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > I think abiword has an icon for page setup, with a picture of a page
> > and printer on it (but I dont have abiword on this machine so I'm not
> > sure).
>
> Yes, it appears to be identical to the Print icon.

Okay, now I'm on a machine with abiword and it seems I was mentally
combining the Properties icon (page+spanner) with the printer icon to
imagine a page+printer icon for page setup.

> >From the usability perspective, I've never really understood why 'Page
> Setup' exists.

Too many options.
There is just too much going on to put it in the general preferences.

> Why aren't all the printing-related settings in the
> Print dialog (for Abiword, at least some are duplicated there)?  Or if a
> word processor needs more control of formatting than the print dialog
> has, wouldn't those go into a Format - Page or the like.
>
> After writing that, I note that Abiword's 'File - Page Setup' is in fact
> the same dialog that you get from 'Format - Document'.  OpenOffice has
> no Page Setup.  Gedit has one, and it looks to me like things I would
> expect to be in Preferences.

There may be a better way of doing it but in this case I'm happy enough to
work with what is there for now.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan