From kde-core-devel Wed Aug 21 22:57:48 2002 From: Lauri Watts Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 22:57:48 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Human Interface Guidelines X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=102997082324715 =2D----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I'm bringing this to core-devel, to get the attention of some of the people who should be involved in this kind of discussion, and are unlikely to be on kde-cafe, and also because the CC list has gotten nearly out of control. =20 The HIG we're talking about is here: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/index.html To Seth, I think we need to just slow down :) Please realise, for KDE, this is a veritable flood of new information, and = you need to give us all a little time to digest it. I realise some of us (me included) reacted quickly to the language in the announcement, but I also think we are getting stuck now in smoothing each others feathers and not really achieving anything (yet). Please remember, most of your current audience have never heard of or seen the HIG before. Please also realise the kde-cafe list is by the "off topic" chat list and n= ot heavily populated by the developers who will need to implement any changes arising from this whole thing. I have therefore posted this to kde-core-devel, since any real decisions need to be made there anyway. I have a sort of a plan of attack as to how to go about this, and I'd like = to lay it out for discussion. 1: How about nothing concrete on *anything* is done for a few days. Again,= =20 many of us have never heard of or seen the HIG before, and there's 130 very= =20 densely packed pages of information there to digest. So lets give everyone= =20 who is interested a chance to go through it in more depth. Specifically there are several people who should be involved in this discussion and haven't, so far. I'm thinking here of Ryan Cumming, Malcolm Hunter, Stephen Binner, who have between them done the bulk of the work bringing KDE into line with the existing style guide and Waldo Bastian, who originally wrote most of it. On first reading, it appears to be very GNOME specific, a closer reading sh= ows that it needn't be, and what there is that looks GNOME specific, we can provide alternate KDE content for. 2: A mailing list is a good idea. freedesktop.org seems to me a good idea = for=20 hosting it, IMHO. I prefer to see more input from other KDE developers on= =20 this first, so please, take a breather until there is some consensus - I=20 can't speak for all of KDE. I think using the existing GNOME or KDE usability lists would either drown current traffic in HIG concerns, or vice versa, the HIG traffic would be smothered in desktop specific issues. 3: Someone makes a new list, in a week or so, and invites interested parties to join, and we start there. Take the HIG one section at a time, clearly demarcate what is different from KDE current best practise and/or diverges from the written KDE styleguides, and bring those issues back to KDE for discussion. I think this would leave a large majority of the document inta= ct exactly as it is, and will give a concrete list of changes for discussion by KDE's developers and usability team. Seth, please also note the timing: We're nearly ready to start serious preparation for a release, the feature freeze is already in place, and the message freeze is not too far away. KDE Developers will be fairly busy in the next while, and changes to the code will be impossible for this period too. All of this will be ready for discussion and or implementation (or no= t) for KDE 3.2. =46or those wondering why my specific active interest in this issue, consis= tent and well designed interfaces are a lot easier to document, and a lot easier to translate. Conversely, drastic changes in the GUI will require equally drastic changes in the documentation and forewarned is forearmed, so to speak. I expect I can be useful with the DocBook too :) Regards, =2D -- Lauri Watts KDE Documentation: http://i18n.kde.org/doc/ KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org/ =2D----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE9ZBrt/gUyA7PWnacRAuJMAJsGn/JsAQxG3tyM/G9hLQs/iemNDQCaAolf trXgEdMEqc78BCYGKOv7Z1Y=3D =3DdzPx =2D----END PGP SIGNATURE-----