Re: Aqua Interface Guidelines & Close Window location ?
Re: Aqua Interface Guidelines & Close Window location ?
- Subject: Re: Aqua Interface Guidelines & Close Window location ?
- From: Ondra Cada <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 20:53:05 +0200
Rob,
>
>>>>> Rob Rix (RR) wrote at Thu, 20 Sep 2001 13:14:42 -0400:
RR> And by the way, to a programmer, nibs aren't files, they are packages,
RR> but to a user, they might as well be files. Or am I missing something?
Well, two things, I guess:
First, what's a NIB to a user? Those things are developer-eyes-only ;)
What's more important, a "document" generally might be something different
from a file even from user's point of view. It can be a database view, for
example, whose attributes are held not in a file, but elsewhere (say, in user
defaults). It can be a _visible_ folder (ie. not a package). It can be,
actually, just *anything*.
What *is* an invariant is the document behaviour: that it is a
self-contained piece of data, which can be opened (not *necessarily* from a
file), saved (not *necessarily* to a file), closed, etc.
Besides, it is much more proper to read the menu "Document... close it".
That action has *NOTHING AT ALL* to do with any file even in case the
document _is_ represented by a file on disk.
See ProjectBuilder; it has the GUI worked out properly. There are services
related to its document, which is the project -- therefore they are in
"Project" menu. There are other services related to _files_, well, they are
in "File" menu.
The same would apply for any other application. If it works just on
documents -- regardless the way they are stored -- it should have the menu
called preferrably by the *ACTUAL* thing which the document contains (like
"Sheet", "Table", "Database", etc.), or, if this is impossible or would be
clumsy, "Document". If the applications works anyhow on files which are not
related to the document, it should have "File" menu. If the application does
both, it should have both menus.
Just have a look at the Mail application: the "File" menu there is quite
nonsensical: there is just *ONE* item there which has *ANY* relation to some
file (the "Save As...").
---
Ondra Cada
OCSoftware: email@hidden
http://www.ocs.cz
private email@hidden
http://www.ocs.cz/oc