Re: [Usability] ʽextraneous textʼ in dialogs

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Shaun McCance wrote:

> > > What's the current stance on things like
> > > <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143592> and
> > > <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143594>?
> >
> > Both of those bugs refer to explantory text in brackets after a
> > sentence in dialogs (it definately looks kind of ugly), specifically
> > in Gnome Terminal.

The email provided very little explanation, it didn't even mention what
program was in question.  A quick summary might help draw the attention of
those who are interested in the issue, and rather than complain about it
being missing I attempted to provide a useful summary.

> > I think rephrasing to take things out of brackets would help, possibly
> > reorgansing the interface to be more self explanatory.  Since these
> > are essentially tips it would make sense to put them in tooltips.
> > (Which is pretty much what dobey said.)

> Of the five cases pointed out in these two reports, only three
> are providing parenthetical information on a particular label.

3 out of 5 ain't bad.  I was going for summary but you are welcome to look
at it in more detail if it interests you.

I intend to sit out of discussions on the terminal as much as possible but
since I'd already started and drafted a reply I went ahead and sent it.
I made no claim of having done detailed analysis.

> Of those three, one uses the parenthetical to clarify meaning,
> while the other two use the parenthetical to provide examples.

> Why remove them?

You responded to my post rather than any other in the discussion and it
seems a lot like you are criticizing me.

I did not say remove, I suggested rephrase.  Either the explanatory text
needs to be there or it does not.  There is no need to put examples behind
parenthesis.  I have a tendency to use excessive amounts of punctuation
(lisp can do that to you) so it is a mistake I am all too familiar with
(also using todo as a single word and/or using "and/or" instead of
recognising OR is not XOR but includes an implied AND would be two other
mistakes I had to unlearn).  Perhaps some of the phrases might benefit
from a rewording or being made more terse but since a user made the effort
of providing feedback I do hope the developers will give it a closer look.

I'll leave the rest of this discussion to those who are more interested in
the terminal.

-- 
Alan