Re: Terminology

[Mike Newman <mike gtnorthern demon co uk>]

On 17 Apr 2001 11:22:30 +0100, colin z robertson wrote:

> > True enough - is there perhaps a neutral term which translates well
> > which could strike a balance between the two?
> 
> There's always "options". To my mind that doesn't have any
> connotations either way.

I like "options" too, but this is really one for the i18n people to
think about perhaps?

> > I think that in terms of a UI guidelines documents, we ought perhaps to
> > be encouraging developers to separate the two sorts of configuration
> > questions - even if its into two distinct tabs within a PropertyBox.
> 
> I'm not sure about this. In general one wants these things organised
> by subject. Organising by level of technicality would break this in a
> lot of cases.

At first I agreed with you, but after looking at a few of the apps on my
desktop it's actually not far from being the norm - mainly by virtue of
the way hackers think/work perhaps. For example, looking at the
"Properties" box of the mailcheck applet one sees two tabs - one
primarily asking how the user wants the applet to do things, the other
asking for technical information about the mailbox. OK, the tabs aren't
labelled well as such, but this is a reasonable example.

Mike

-- 
Mike Newman, Weston-super-Mare, UK | http://www.gtnorthern.demon.co.uk
"I think the internet is the greatest waste of time since masturbation
 was discovered.", Norman Mailer