Re: Contraversial! [was Re: Commit (HEAD): Menu tweaks for simplicity and improved HIG compliance.]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Robert Staudinger wrote:

> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:20:03 +0100
> From: Robert Staudinger <robsta@stereolyzer.net>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>
> Cc: AbiWord-Dev Developers <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
> Subject: Re: Contraversial! [was Re: Commit (HEAD): Menu tweaks for
> simplicity and improved HIG compliance.]
>
> Am Sonntag, den 20.02.2005, 19:15 +0000 schrieb Alan Horkan:
>
> [...]
>
> > > List of changes:
> > >
> > > File
> > > + Items reordered for HIG compliance.
> >
> > Not sure what this means exactly, the positions in menus can be based on a
> > variety of factors. Sometimes alphabetical ordering is helpful but mostly
> > things are organised to take advantage of the prime real estate at the
> > very top or very bottom of a menu (for speed of access).
>
> Please take the time to build abi and look at the actual changes before
> issuing such vague critique.

Sorry sometimes it does work the other way round and you need to justify
the changes not me. Great and deliberate effort has been made in the past
to set things the way they are.

> The positions in menus are based on recommendations made by the HIG.

The HIG is vague, deliberately so.

In most cases I give a good explanation of the reasoning behind things
in the HIG. I have an idea of why the rules are there and when to bend
them and what trade offs are being made. Abiword has always followed
Microsoft Word unless there was a specific good reason to do otherwise
which is another important factor in the design.

> Feel free to file RFEs for features you'd like and bugs for cases where
> abi contradicts obvious usability principles or HIG recommendations so
> nothing gets lost. Patches would be event better.

I know you are a programmer and I'm not but Abiword has not been run like
that in the past. If you wont listen to me you definately need to talk to
Dom and Martin before making these kinds of changes (even Dom got shouted
at for adding the Tools menu many years ago).

> > > - Open copy (not HIG compl.)
> >
> > How so?
>
> Not specified by the HIG.

The HIG does not and cannot cover everything and is deliberately limited
as it is trying to be guidelines for a whole desktop not just one Word
Processor. It does indicate that it is not a feature every application
would want to have but this alone is not a good enough reason to remove
it.

> > We used to have Import and Export and they were relabelled Open Copy and
> > Save Copy so as to better comply with the HIG.

Which incidentally I never liked and opposed but was overruled by Dom.
The point I was trying to make was that if you look at them as
Import Export you might get a better idea of why they are there
and what they are for.

> >
> > > Edit

> > > + Remove Header
> > > + Remove Footer
> >
> > This might be more consistant with Microsoft Word and I wanted
> > somethign like this but I recall Martin deliberately did these they way
> > they are for a reason.
> >
> > > Format
> > > + Reordered for hopefully improved handling
> >
> > Please explain? Does this effect consistency with Microsoft Word?
>
> Again, please build abi to look at the changes or wait until somebody
> does it for you.

> The patch is there as a basis for discussion. That's how OSS works. I
> can't spend so much time arguing, there's bugs to be fixed.

Abiword has always been extremely nice to users and listened carefully to
feedback an the Abiword community has a good character and friendly nature
not often seen in Open Source projects as a result.

Things are the way they are for specific reasons and as these things were
done I was there challenging people why and trying to get well thought out
solutions that even if I didn't agree with at least there were strong
reasons for doing things that way.

> FWIW, consistency with other programs is pretty low on my list.
>
> > > - RTL paragraph setting only via paragraph dlg
> >
> > I dont use RTL so this works for me but Bidi users might screem for your
> > blood over this.
>
> Messages referring to blood, murder and similar things are likely to be
> held back by my spam filter ( like
> http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8341#c1 ).

Interesting.

> > > - Got rid of "Style" submenu
> > > - Remove Header
> > > - Remove Footer
> > >
> > > Tools
> > > + Check Spelling in toplevel menu
> > > - Got rid of "Spelling" submenu (prefs only via prefs dlg)
> >
> > With Grammar we will soon need some sort of "Spelling and Grammar" submenu
> > back so there is no point removing it.
> > If you have a lot of plugins installed the Tools menu is pretty
> > disorganised, pushing another item to the top level menu doesn't help.
>
> Yet another sign that you did not really /look/ at the changes.
> The submenu entry has been traded in for a toplevel entry.

I understood what you meant. I stand by my original point, not that I
don't reserve the right to say the change is a good idea when you have
provided further justification.

> > lot of those changes, they are far more contraversial than they might
> > seem.
>
> No problem at all, user feedback is appreciated.

That is not the impression I'm getting at all.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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Received on Mon Feb 21 00:53:56 2005