Re: [Usability] Updating the HIG

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 21 Mar 2006, at 18:14, Joachim Noreiko wrote:

> I saw Callum's edits to the wiki page on the HIG and
> it's reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask
> for a while:
> How do we update the HIG?

Current answer: very slowly :)  Historically, Bryan, Seth and myself  
have added bits as and when the need has arisen (e.g. in response to  
bug reports, or just things we think of), and we got together and  
reviewed the changes before we did a release.  We also tried to go  
through all the open bugs every now and again to clean them out as  
much as possible.

In recent months, though, Bryan and Seth have been working on other  
things, and I haven't had as much time to work on the HIG as I'd like  
either.  So there's rather a backlog at the moment.

> Should we submit patches to it, or is a complete
> rewrite in the works?

Patches are weclome, but I usually end up rewriting even my own bits  
two or three times, so just filing a bug with a list of the  
recommendations you'd like to see is probably equally good :)

I wouldn't say a complete rewrite is imminent, but I'd like to close  
as many of the outstanding bugs as possible to get another stable  
release out the door before the (northern hemisphere) summer, and  
then take a step back and think about how we can make the whole thing  
better.  (E.g. the ideas on the wiki-- and other people are welcome  
to chip in with ideas here too: http://live.gnome.org/ 
HumanInterfaceGuidelines)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems