Re: [Usability] ‘extraneous text’ in dialogs

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2006-10-18 at 22:56 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> 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'm sorry, it really did come off that way.  It wasn't
intentional.  I was moreso intending to comment on the
topic as a whole, and your email was just a convenient
starting point for 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.

And I agree with you about rewording the labels that
have parentheses in them.  I was mostly defending the
standalone explanatory labels, which I think should be
acceptable in moderation.

--
Shaun