Re: "About" (Re: gcalc docs (unfinished))

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 05:05:03PM -0500 or thereabouts, Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> On 27 Apr 2000, Karl EICHWALDER wrote:
> > An aside:  Does "About" sound good to your American/British ears?
> > Telsa?  For the German translations we aggred to use "Info..." as the
> > menue entry to call the so called About box.
> 
> No.  It sounds strange(IMO).  I guess we are all used to seeing this used
> so much we don't notice anymore.  It has become a standard though, so it
> is better to follow it, from a UI perspective. The good point is it is
> sufficiently unusual that nobody would consider using "About" anywhere
> else in their program.  "Info" is a more general and useful term, so maybe
> it is nice that this term is not used up already?

I agree with Dan. "About <programname>" would be slightly more obvious
to a new person, but even that isn't quite right. There's still nothing
that tells the person that it's about the, well, stuff that many users
don't think of, I think: author, licence, and so on. I think it would
be more likely to make someone think it's "How to use this program",
especially when there are no docs and thus there is no "Help" button.

I have been told that Windows has "About" boxes, so perhaps it's
a carry-over from there? In that case, it will make sense to people
familiar with that.

If "Info" makes more sense in German, cool. Only disadvantage I can
see is that people familiar with unix may think it's going to bring
up documentation in texinfo format.  (There's always _something_ :))

Telsa