Re: [Usability] Icons for document systems

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 16:43 -0700, Bill Wohler wrote:
> Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 15:40 -0700, Bill Wohler wrote:
> > > Given a hypertext document reader such as Info, what icons would you
> > > suggest for going back and forth in the history, going to the next and
> > > previous chapter, going up a section, or going up all the way to the
> > > table of contents?
> > 
> > Info is beyond a hypertext reader.

> Yup, that's why I affixed "document".

Like an HTML Document? :) Perhaps documentation reader would be a better
term, and one should throw out hypertext entirely from the sentence.
It's an old buzzword from the 90s, that has become quite pervasive in
the computing world, as just something that's there now. Even Tomboy, a
little note-taking app, has links between notes and stuff now. I suppose
it's a hypertext document reader too. :) But I deciphered your meaning,
from the rest of your mail, so it's all good.

> >              I would suggest using the same bits that Yelp does, which
> > is what should be displaying info under GNOME anyway.
> 
> Yelp 2.12.2 on my system (Debian (etch)) doesn't have icons for Next
> Section, Previous Section, and Contents, and it doesn't even have an
> "Up" function, so there aren't really any bits to take. What icons would
> Yelp use if it had them? ;-)

It wouldn't, and shouldn't, have icons for multiple levels of
navigation, in the same area. That would be quite confusing to me, as a
user. Next, Next, and Next?! Yelp doesn't have sections. "Contents"
would presumably be the "Home" icon you see, which takes you to the TOC.

Info is a bit too complicated in general I think. I actively avoid
reading info pages, actually. I've found it basically impossible to
actually find the information I want, and to navigate to it. Any chance
you could just rewrite the Emacs docs in docbook, and use appropriate
documentation output for the system you're installing to? Then you could
integrate better with the desktops, and install the documenation into
the system's help... system. That would be much better for the user, I
think. Then they get the documentation, and in a format, and
application, that they are perhaps better associated with.

-- dobey