Re: [Usability] The use of ellipsis (...) in menus

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 13:28:20 +0000
> From: Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>
> To: Sergej Kotliar <sigge hystrix se>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] The use of ellipsis (...) in menus
>
> On Mar 15, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Sergej Kotliar wrote:
> > ...
> > When translating some apps into Swedish, I noticed some strings had
> > triple dots (...) after them. Turned out - most of them were in the
> > menus. Since I had never thought about their existence, I decided to
> > find out what they meant. By looking at different apps, I couldn't
> > consistently find the common denominator of the actions that had the
> > three dots. A google search showed that in both Microsoft and Apple
> > Human Interface Guidelines, these three dots symbolize that the action
> > needed additional data to be entered, most likely opening a new window
> > for that data. As a result - "Save As..." has this, and "Save" doesn't.
> > ...
> > When trying to prove this to myself in GNOME, I looked at some of the
> > most used apps (gedit, eog, nautilus, epiphany, terminal), and notice
> > that they all treat this rule a bit differently. Where one app had the
> > three dots, another would not. There were even some inconsistencies
> > within the apps themselves.
> > ...
>
> Bug reporting time!
>
> gedit:
> *   "Page Setup..." should have an ellipsis and doesn't.
> *   "Print Preview" has an ellipsis and shouldn't.
> *   "Page Setup..." should have an ellipsis and doesn't.
> *   "Check Spelling..." should have an ellipsis and doesn't.

It would be nice to have stock labels for some of these and get the
right (and translated) once and for all.  if wonder if that is actually
possible, I've a strange feelign there may be some reason or another
blocking more stock items (and with them stock labels).

In an ideal toolkit wouldn't most of the labels and gedit and eog be
covered by stock labels and standard widgets?

I dunno, gotta dash.

- Alan