Re: The HIG and Open a Copy

Alan Horkan wrote:

>On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Robert Staudinger wrote:
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>>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:
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>>>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
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>>+ It's not used very frequently. (Use cases?)
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>I don't disagree with this, but as the old 80/20 rule suggests most
>people only use about 20 percent of the features.
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>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.
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>>+ 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).
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>Are revisions stable enough? I thought there were still problems with it.
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>>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.
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>That is a much better line of reasoning.
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>>If people want it back for win32 or cocoa i'll put it back in.
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>In my opinion keeping abiword consistent with itself is important and
>this should be done for all platforms or not at all.
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>Sincerely
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>Alan Horkan
>http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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I personally believe "Save as copy" is more useful than "Open a copy",
since it is both more common and can be used to a similar effect. (Some
other apps have only Save as copy or Save copy, not open). This might
be a good compromise? If open a copy is removed, the ability to create
templates should at least be "How-to"ed because it provided a quick and
easy way to achieve "template-like" function without a template.

-- 
Ryan Pavlik
--
"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses."  --Confucius