[Usability] Primary window decorated as a dialog in an utility application?

["Артём Попов" <artfwo gmail com>]

Hi all,

I just wanted to know if GUP people consider okay to decorate an
application primary window as a dialog with some small utilities, like
a calculator, a volume control, etc. as seen in gfloppy: it does not
have a menu or statusbar, but has some dialog-like buttons in the
bottom.

This also raises another question: should such an app mimic the
GtkDialog appearance (the separator, spacings, etc.) or not? If yes,
than is it okay to use GtkDialog class directly (note, that GtkDialogs
do not have a minimize button)? If not, then what spacings and
decorations are considerer "standard"? I ask this, because it seems to
me that most GNOME apps have non-HIG spacings in their dialogs (e. g.
6-px window border instead of the HIG-recommented value - 12)

And finally, how "Help" and "About" info could be made available in
such an app? I was thinking about a help button in the "action-area"
and a "--about" command-line option like in Zenity.

Thanks everyone for your answers. --Artem