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 _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
