Re: [Usability] Keyboard prefs, layouts tab

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Mar 25, 2006, at 11:55 PM, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> I'm working on updating the user guide for this preference tool,

Thank you! Sentences in the current help like "Use the Layouts tabbed 
section to set your keyboard layout" and "Select your keyboard model 
from the drop-down list" are highly unfortunate.

> and there's a few things I'd like your opinion on.
>
> Is 'Selected Layouts' a good choice of label? I'm about to write'To 
> remove a layout, select it and press Remove'. But hang on... they're 
> *all* selected, they're called Selected Layouts! Should we avoid
> overloading the word 'select' as it's so important in the interface?

Absolutely. What is the list for? Windows has a list labelled 
"Installed keyboard languages and layouts". I can kind of understand 
that, though it seems to be to do with disk space rather than utility. 
Mac OS X has a list "Select the keyboard layouts, input methods, and 
palettes that appear in the input menu". I can understand that, though 
it's a bit wordy. But what is "Selected layouts" good for?

I've spent a couple of minutes staring at this "Layouts" tab, and I 
still have *no idea* how it's supposed to work. I don't know what the 
list is for. I don't know why you'd want to rearrange the items in the 
list -- and if you would, what's wrong with dragging them or using 
Alt+Up and Alt+Down, instead of using separate "Up" and "Down" buttons. 
I don't know why the list has radio buttons disguised as checkboxes. 
Without reading that bug report, I don't know what "Separate group for 
each window" is for. I don't know why I'd want to "Reset [t]o 
Defaults". And the help doesn't.

> Was the matter of the "separate group for each window" label resolved?
> The bug is still open: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308282

That smells like it needs a pair of radio buttons.
Switching layout applies to: (*) every window  (*) current window
But quite possibly tossing a coin and hard-coding the result would be 
better.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/