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List:       kde
Subject:    RE: KDE - OK
From:       "Markus Holzem" <markus () holzem ! de>
Date:       1999-07-06 13:33:47
[Download RAW message or body]

Just a few words to clarify:

* To my oppinion guidelines cannot apply to the
  past. Since 1.1.2 will come out soon the guidelines
  should apply to the next upcoming release which I
  suspect to be KDE 2.0.

* It is not simply done to write down some items
  (correct keyboard shortcuts, correct names for
  menus, etc.). When you think about visual and
  functional consistency you have to think it through
  to the bitter end.

* Currently I get headaches with the mouse handling:
  How is the user supposed to select/unselect objects?
  With action on single click you don't have much left
  for the selection.

* Take the mouse as an example for consistency: a mouse
  click with the left mouse button together with the
  SHIFT modifier usually extends the selection. You
  can apply it to icons only, but consistency says,
  that SHIFT-leftclick should extend any selection,
  i.e. list boxes, marked text, etc. And then: where
  is the anchor (the start) of the selection.

You won't get this stuff done in a month so the
deadline of KDE 2.0 (beginning next year) looks very
appealing to me.

The user will start to benefit from the efforts,
because more and more applications will change their
event handling to comply with the standards. But I
would never put a logo on a previous release.

If we grant something like a logo we have to be
careful about exceptions of the rule. There are a
lot of good reasons to break with guidelines and
we should be careful to be too strict about them.
The item that comes first my mind ist CTRL-F for "find".
In a mail application it is used for ages and over
all systems I know for "forward mail". This is a
de-facto standard that we should probably not change...

After the guidelines are really usable they should
start to evolve with KDE. But changes shouldn't
completely break with the spirit of the existing
guidelines. But perhaps it could be nice to incorporate
some new (and old) ideas that would support the user.
Following things could be nice, but only as a SECOND
(OR THIRD) STEP:

 * context sensitive help (SHIFT F1 and click on a control)
 * auto scroll (middle mouse button down and dragging
   for scrolling without scrollbars - like a virtual
   panner)
 * hints on disabled menu items, what the user has to
   do to get them enabled
 * different toolbar button sizes
 * ...

These ideas have to be approved by the KDE core team. There
will be still pros and cons against each change to the
guidelines and perhaps we need something like a vote system.
But this is music of the future ;-)

Markus

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kde-request@lists.netcentral.net
> [mailto:kde-request@lists.netcentral.net]On Behalf Of Jean-Paul Kogelman
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 12:36 PM
> To: KDE general mailing list
> Subject: RE: KDE - OK
> 
> 
> > Peter and I agreed with Waldo to set up a special
> > mailinglist for this issue. It will have the same
> > policy like kde-devel - everyone can read it but
> > only people who ask/get invited can post messages.
> [Big snip]
> 
> I do hope you're limiting these rules to specific KDE versions? 
> Otherwise it'll
> make it a lot more difficult as a developer to be KDE-OK on all 
> KDE platforms
> (1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.98(?), 2.0).
> 
> 
> Just rubbing it in again, :)
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Jean-Paul Kogelman
> The Infuse Project
> www.infuse.org
> -- 
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