Re: The HIG and Open a Copy

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Robert Staudinger wrote:

> Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:34:03 +0100
> From: Robert Staudinger <robsta@stereolyzer.net>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>
> Cc: AbiWord Developer Mailing List <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
> Subject: Re: The HIG and Open a Copy
>
> Am Montag, den 21.02.2005, 17:05 +0000 schrieb Alan Horkan:
> >
> > Just because something is not in the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines does
> > not mean it shouldn't be in Abiword. Open a Copy may not be a heavily
> > used feature but it being absent from the HIG is not reason enough on its
> > own to remove it.
>
> I must admit my initial argumentation only referring to the HIG was
> probably not very convincing.
> I think that "Open a Copy" is not needed because

> + It's not used very frequently. (Use cases?)

I don't disagree with this, but as the old 80/20 rule suggests most
people only use about 20 percent of the features.

If there was an easy way for non programmers to reveal this functionality
I wouldn't have any qualms about turning it off by default.

> + I'd rather have revisions turned on by default, so the user can manage
> her/his versions within one file instead of having multiple files
> cluttering the default save location (new users often tend to save
> everything at one place).

Are revisions stable enough? I thought there were still problems with it.

> That said i think the simplification of removing the "Open a Copy" menu
> item is in the spirit of the HIG which promotes uncluttered menus.

That is a much better line of reasoning.

> If people want it back for win32 or cocoa i'll put it back in.

In my opinion keeping abiword consistent with itself is important and
this should be done for all platforms or not at all.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Received on Mon Feb 21 18:49:41 2005