[haiku-development] Re: Checking consistency of used strings

  • From: Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:49:23 -0500

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Humdinger <humdingerb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 1. Ellipses
> I proposed a change to the use of ellipses, see ticket #3284 at
> http://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/3284.  Instead of a discussion on Trac, let's
> stay on the mailing list.  Here's my current suggestion:
>
>> "An ellipsis is a series of 3 dots (...) used to tell the user that a
>> control -- often a menu item or button -- will open a window asking for
>> additional information that is needed to complete the item's function. For
>> example, "Print..." will open a dialog before it actually starts printing.
>> No ellipses must be used, if the function already implies the opening of a
>> window, like "Settings" opening a preferences panel or "Show Log" opening a
>> window with some data."

I definitely agree that ellipsis should not be used on everything that
opens a window. But it seems the one area where the various other
platform HIGs do not agree is menu items that open preference windows.
The Apple HIG says they should have ellipsis, but the Java, GNOME and
Windows HIGs say they shouldn't. In this case I suppose we should go
with the majority so your above quote is probably good.

So I at least give the go ahead for you to make some patches to
correct this in various Haiku applications.

> 2. Capitalization
> Does everyone agree on the definition in the HIG at
> http://factory.haiku-os.org/documentation/HIG/ch06s04.html:
>
>> "Use title capitalization in all places except where full sentences are
>> used. This means that all "important" words and the last word in a phrase --
>> regardless of importance -- are capitalized. Prepositions, definite
>> articles, and conjunctions (as, for, to, the, and, etc.) are generally not
>> capitalized except when they are the first or last word in the phrase, such
>> as in "Save As..."."

This is pretty much what the Apple HIG says and I think it makes sense.

> Examples:
> "Capture Entire Screen", "Capture Active Window", "Take Screenshot
> after a Delay of x Seconds", "Back to Save", "Always on Top", "Tracker
> Always First"

All of these are fine except the third ("Take Screenshot...") which I
think is a full sentence. In general once there are over 4 or 5 words
I think it is getting close to a full sentence and if it isn't one
maybe it should be made into one. One example from this thread is the
Mail preference "Check every _x_ [Minutes]", which could become "Check
for mail every _x_ [minutes]".

> 3. Settings, Options, Preferences
> * I suggest to only use "Preferences", if the opened panel is a system
> preference, also available from Deskbar|Preferences. For example:
> Tracker, Deskbar, E-mail.
>
> * All others should be "Settings" as that corresponds to their location
> in ~/config/settings/

This sounds pretty reasonable. Still the whole preference versus
settings thing is a bit ambiguous. Besides our BeOS legacy is there
any reason to call all those little apps preferences and not settings?
Or why shouldn't the preferences/settings of an application also be
under a "Preferences" menu item? We could also rename
~/config/settings to ~/config/preferences. It really is a bit annoying
that computing has so many similar words for this concept in English
(at least the three preferences, settings and options.) I guess it
helps if we at least try to not use "options".

> Most apps have their "Settings" menu item under "Edit", only a few in
> it's own menu "Settings": MediaPlayer, Terminal, TV. I first thought
> "Settings|Settings" looks a bit stupid, esp. when it's the only menu
> item. But IMO it's better than e.g. "Options|Settings".

I think in general the MediaPlayer (and TV) menu needs some
redesigning (or just complete removal in favor of something else), so
I wouldn't worry too much about that. I guess the general idea of the
Settings menu is when there are a few settings that should be easy to
change without needing to open another window. Looking at the Settings
menu in Terminal, which has a "Preferences..." submenu (hmmm) I think
the font and font size selection in the Preferences window could be
moved into the Settings menu. Then the Preferences window can be
changed to a Color Settings window (with a "Colors..." menu item
probably...I think the ellipsis make sense there.) Or all the settings
could be moved into the Preferences window and then the menu item to
open that could be moved into the Terminal menu. In that sense Apple
has things right with there "App" menu on every application: it is an
obvious location for a settings or preferences menu item.

> My work would be limited to providing patches to change strings. Any
> coding changes, like e.g. moving "Settings" from "Edit" to it's own
> menu (if that would even be desirable) would have to be discussed
> elsewhere and implemented by a programmer.

Yeah that makes sense. Someday I could tackle some of the more
developer-oriented fixes.

-- 
Regards,
Ryan

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