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List:       kde-look
Subject:    RE: Standard questions and answers
From:       "Glen Parker" <glenebob () nwlink ! com>
Date:       1999-09-16 10:41:27
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Well, I seem to have gotten side tracked...  I hate that ;-)

The only point I really wanted to make in this thread is the one that Martin
made quite concisely: OK/Cancel makes more sense in many situations.  I'll
try one more angle...

Imagine you just hit the little X to close a window, and up pops a dialog
with *no text* and just two buttons.  If the buttons are 'OK' and 'Cancel',
you can fairly safely make an assumption of what will happen: OK will
continue with possible ill effects, and 'Cancel' will prevent *anything*
from happening, it's that simple.  If the buttons are 'Yes' and 'No', you
really can't make an assumption.  Here are too possible texts that prove the
point: "This document has changed.  Do you want to save your changes?" and
"This document has changed.  Are you sure you want to quit?"

OK, you say, any self-respecting dialog has text on it.  Sure, but people
barely read those things anyway.  It's like pulling teeth getting people to
tell me what an error dialog says when something goes wrong with my
software.  But they sure do know what the buttons say!

That's why I think it makes more sense to make the buttons fit the context
of the situation, and if you have to reword the question a little, fine.

Now, back to your original post in this thread, you wanted to make
guidelines for standard questions.  I think it might be usefull to add to
the KDE libs some API calls to display standard questions, like this one:

"This document has been modified.  Would you like to save your changes?" ->
Yes, No, Cancel
(or whatever is agreed upon)

If a group of calls get implemented for standard questions and all the apps
in cvs get ported right away, then the standards can be improved much more
easily in the future.

> > The last time somebody asked me if I was sure I wanted to do
> something, I
> > sayed 'no', and then did it anyway ;-)  The question is
> ambiguous, and so is
> > the answer.  The point is, you don't care if the user is sure
> or not, you
> > care whether they are going to do it anyway.
>
> Um, yeeeessss....? If the GUI asks the user a question, and they lie,
> there's not much we can do about that. All I am trying to ensure is that
> we ask a simple questions and give simple unambiguous potential answers.
> If something needs confirming, asking the user if they are sure they
> want to do it doesn't strike me as ambiguous. If they don't understand
> they'll say "No" because they're not sure. Perhaps I've missed your
> point?

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