Re: Newbie question: forcing data format during saveDocumentTo:
Re: Newbie question: forcing data format during saveDocumentTo:
- Subject: Re: Newbie question: forcing data format during saveDocumentTo:
- From: Wade Tregaskis <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 18:53:31 +1000
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. I have been
designing software for very unsophisticated users for fifteen years
now, and in this case I want it absolutely clear that when they
export the data it is NOT a Save As... When two actions lead to
completely different results, they should not be lumped together.
How does your Export option do anything different from a Save As?
From a user's point of view, you still end-up with a file on the disk
(so they have saved it, right?).
That's a gross over simplification.
I will allow that there are plenty of applications that include
less-capable file types in the save as dialog, along with the
appropriate warnings, and many of them work just fine. But in all
those cases the new version of the data is at least usable by the
application that just saved it. That is not the case here. Once that
data goes out, it's not coming back.
I did wonder if you were calling it Export because you couldn't load
it again. IMO it's still the wrong thing to do; you're changing the
name of the save operation because you are unable to load the file
back into your program, which is a distinction based on your program's
*loading* behaviour and nothing to do with saving. Personally, I'd
still use the Save As box, but if I couldn't load the data once it was
saved like this, I'd warn the user when they saved, and I wouldn't
clear the document changed flag (so that they get asked to save if the
application terminates).
This seems far less intuitive to me. They go to Save As, with the
intent of making a copy of their document and working on that copy -
leaving the original version henceforth untouched - and then they're
asked to save again later.. what the?
I would also say that, despite being a techie myself, I find programs
with Export and Save As harder to use, because I never know whether
the file format I'm after is in the Export box or the Save As box (it
usually isn't obvious, so sometimes I have to try both). I suspect a
lot of users will have that problem.
It is implicit that anything you have 'saved' can be 'loaded' again.
If you break this convention, you'll only confuse people, as in the
example above.
Then there is the Import menu item. Unlike the load and save pair, the
formats supported by import need not be the same as those by export,
although they can [and usually do] overlap. The point of this
distinction (between save/load and export/import) is that users know
that when they are importing or exporting, they're converting to/from
the native format. This has several possible consequences, one of
which is that the import/export will be lossy (e.g. exporting a psd to
a jpg, then back again; you lose layers, vector art, quality, etc).
Wade Tregaskis
-- Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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