Re: [Usability] Recommended HIG providing additional info/help

[Age Bosma <agebosma home nl>]

Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-01-21 at 15:18 +0100, Age Bosma wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > First of all, I feel that I need to make myself clear about telling you 
> > that I'm no linux user. Therefor I'm not able to "know" linux stuff you 
> > guys might assume to be known to any linux user. I am however a big 
> > opensource fan if that's making you feel a bit better about me again for 
> > not using linux ;-)
> > The reason I'm contacting you to discuss some matter is because I think 
> > it realy good that the HIG is being created. It not only usefull for 
> > just linux programmers but for programmers in general.
>
>
> The GNOME HIG is not for Linux programmers, it's for GNOME programmers -
> GNOME runs on Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Mac OS X, BSD, and even Windows.
> The HIG is *not* generally applicable because it describes the GNOME
> user interface guidelines, not general purpose interface guidelines.  An
> application written for Windows should *not* follow the GNOME HIG, but
> instead should follow Microsoft's guidelines (which do exist, but most
> Windows programmers don't know about them).

I know that this is the case but that doesn't make the GNOME HIG less 
usable for more people than just GNOME users, does it? ;-)
The HIG is good and it probably has a lot in common with other interface 
guidelines. In the end the main goal is consistency in the UI.

I was going through the HIG and found that the matter I spoke of wasn't 
addressed (yet). If you don't consider the fact that I should have a 
look into other guidelines for a moment, would it be a good suggestion 
to add this in the GNOME HIG? I tried to address this more like a 
suggestion and discussion subject than an actual problem I'm stuck with.

I hope this matter isn't going to be considered a no-discuss subject 
simply because I might not be seeing it back into GNOME myself ;-)
I'm just trying to help out a bit by addressing something I found 
interesting to discuss. It might improve the GNOME HIG in the end, I had 
my discussion and you have a better HIG, everybody happy ;-)

Prodoc