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Capsule critiques & notes [quasi OFF-TOPIC]

Regarding Mac OS X:

1) The "/Developer/Applications" folder needs a better, more distinctive
name. I want to make it easily accessible, so I dragged it into the Dock.
Unfortunately, its Dock-name is simply "Applications", which confuses it
with "/Applications" which I've also dragged into the Dock. This is bad,
and will only get worse.

On the whole, developers (including Apple) must be very careful about
naming things. The Dock DOES NOT show any kind of qualifying name or
context, so names should be INDEPENDENTLY DISTINCT, regardless of context.
I recommend Roget's International Thesaurus, 5th edition or later. And an
unabridged dictionary.


2) The design of MRJAppBuilder leaves much to be desired, even for a
developer-oriented tool.

The "MacOS X" pane is nearly incomprehensible to ordinary Java programmers.
It is ENTIRELY incomprehensible to ordinary Java users who simply have a
JAR they need to run. My first question upon seeing the pane: "Which of
these are optional and which are required for correct app behavior?"
Amount of assistance available from Help menu: zero.

The "Java Properties" pane has a table that seems nice and useful until you
try to read the Description column. Then it sucks. Any number of things
would have been better:
a) tooltips (i.e. "balloon help") that appear after a delay hovering
above an item.
b) the description appearing in the Help panel at the bottom of the frame.
c) variable-height items with wrapped text descriptions.

There should be a "Kind" column that states what kind of values are
acceptable for the property. For example, "a classpath" or "a filename" or
"an application signature" or "a boolean true/false". It's way too
difficult to puzzle this out. It's even more difficult when the
Description column is so inaccessible to readers.

The "Add" button is utterly mystifying. It adds an entirely empty item at
the bottom of the list, which means it's invisible. The new list item IS
NOT automatically selected. When it is selected by the user (a feat in
itself, since it's maximally non-obvious that there's anything even there),
you must still double-click on each column in order to enter a value.
Plus, you can't enter anything into the Description column, not even to
remind yourself what the new property means.

It is maximally non-obvious that the "Merge Files" pane will affect the
classpath in the "Application" pane. It doesn't help that these two panes
are at opposite ends of the pane selector. These two panes should be
merged into a single pane named "Parts List". Then, at least you can SEE
that items added to the list of files to merge affects the classpath and
the main class.

Get a copy editor for the Help text. Please.
Wordy & passive voice:
"This panel is to be used for setting the main classname, classpath and
application's location. You must fill in each of these fields before
building the application."

Concise & active voice:
"Set the main class name, classpath, and output application here. All
items are required."

The other panes are similar.

-- GG



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