I have another problem with the enabled/disabled terminology -- I think it can easily be
misunderstood as modifiable/unmodifiable (available/"grayed out"). This terminology is not in common
use and I think it would be more confusing than helpful. Often "click" would be a reasonable
substitute, but I have no problem with "select" and definitely prefer it for options in a list, for
example.
On 2/16/2011 5:20 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
Hi :)
I can totally agree with both points of view. I think select and de-select are
probably easier to understand for more users although it is good to know why i
felt uncomfortable about it! Enabled as the opposite of disabled is more
uncomfortable politically since people in wheelchairs (a growing segment of
society) are often said to be "disabled" despite the fact that there might only
be a very limited number of things they can't do so well and many others they
may do better. So, for a lot of office users the words might be uncomfortable.
Select and de-select are safe even if i do still shudder a bit when de-select is
used.
Generally it is better to stick with a word that is used a lot in documentation
even if it is blatantly wrong or used badly but consistently. Flagging it up by
emailing the list but not changing the documentation is the best way of handling
that sort of thing. My pet hate is the use of , before "and" or "but". It is
bad English but good American so i have to try to stop myself from correcting it
if i ever get around to doing any work. Oddly i prefer lower-case i to
distinguish it from 1 or l and because i think it look friendlier despite it
being wrong.
Regards from
Tom :)
________________________________
From: Jean Hollis Weber<jeanwe...@gmail.com>
To: documentation@libreoffice.org
Sent: Wed, 16 February, 2011 8:54:05
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-documentation] Terminology: "selecting" is not
enough!
On Tue, 2011-02-15 at 23:59 -0800, JDługosz wrote:
I noticed in the chapters I'm working on that often various things, such as
all the items on the various pages of the Options dialog, it refers to
"selecting" an option. In one place it was more noticeable in the user was
directed to "select" something in the dialog.
In that case, the terminology is clearly wrong. Selecting is not the same
as operating on the widget. Selecting directs the attention to it, and
another operation may then be performed, such as toggling a check box.
I suppose in some context where the option itself is referred to in an
imperative sense, saying the option is selected is OK and in fact I didn't
notice initially. But you'd have to be careful about the wording of the
sentence: are you being imperative or directing the user's action? It's
more consistent and easier to just use a word that always works. To that
end, I'm changing whatever descriptive phrase was used to "enabled"
(antonym: "disabled"). That works for any type of control (check box, radio
box, combo-box).
I'm also trying to be more careful about wording things to reflect the
desired state, rather than the action. I.e. clicking on an option doesn't
necessarily enable it: it will toggle it, and you shouldn't click on it
unless it was off before. So don't (just) direct the user to click on
something to achieve an effect. Rather, the effect occurs when the option
is enabled. And of course this is the very case in which merely selecting
it doesn't do anything other than make the gui draw a selection rectangle
around that item.
From a programmer's POV, that's what "select" does. However, from an
ordinary USER's POV, "select" turns it on and "deselect" turns it off.
--Jean
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