<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">2007/7/27, Ian Wadham <<a href="mailto:ianw2@optusnet.com.au">ianw2@optusnet.com.au</a>>:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:24 am, Mauricio Piacentini wrote:<br>> > - Not every input can be put in the status<br>> > - The widget must be clear, and show to the user "you can change it".<br>><br>> OK, I think I agree with you here. And the comboBox used in
<br>> KGameDifficulty really follows this advice, as it is very clear that the<br>> user can change it currently. It still a destructive operation imo which<br>> is not very common in statusbars, but we have the dialog box that asks
<br>> for confirmation, which is nice and necessary in this context.<br>><br>The clarity depends on the current contents of the box and whether the<br>user can recognise a combo box and knows that it can change, imho.
<br><br>If the contents are "Easy" or "Hard", an English speaker can guess they<br>have something to do with skill level. But what if they say "Normal",<br>"Medium" or "High". Also how well does the Easy/Hard meaning (as
<br>difficulty) carry over into other languages? Maybe a label is needed?<br><br>Combo boxes are recognised by having a small grey square and a little<br>black triangle. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a down-arrow? Some
<br>people I know can never get used to them, especially my wife. Fortunately,<br>on the web, empty combo boxes usually have a prompt inside them, but<br>that is not possible in our context.<br><br>> There is also the very strange (message)
<br>> displayed in Kpat ("I just won the game, now it is your turn.") Huh?<br>> This is actually kind of funny, but when my mother saw it, she could not<br>> understand it at all. The game was just launched, what did that mean? :)
<br>> But I think this is something we can cover in this games-specific<br>> guidelines, do you agree?<br>><br>:-) ... I had trouble with that one too. On my screen it says, "I just won<br>the game! Good luck to you.". At first I found it offensive. In Australia
<br>and the UK and I think the USA, "Good luck!" is an expression of<br>goodwill, whereas "Good luck to you!" is usually used in a sarcastic<br>manner. Tenant to landlord, "Well if you think I'm going to put up with
<br>this leaking roof any longer, good luck to you! See you in court!".<br><br>I think what the message is really trying to say is "You can get this one<br>out. Good luck!" or, later in the game, "You can still get this one out ...".
<br>Mind you, to "get this one out" is meaningful in Australia and the UK<br>when speaking of Patience games, but might not be meaningful of<br>Solitaire games in the USA.<br><br>What this message illustrates are some rules of message-writing
<br>I have always tried to use, ever since striking a compiler that had<br>just one diagnostic message for every source-code error:<br>"Category impossible in context".<br><br> a. Use language that the user will understand. In KDE, that would be
<br> simple US English, free of technical terms other than those the<br> target user-group can be expected to know. In an application that<br> steers a yacht, for example, it would be OK and desirable to use<br>
"port tack" and "starboard tack", because they are sailors' tech-speak.<br><br>b. Try to present the information from the user's point of view. In KPat,<br> I imagine the program runs its solver from time to time. If it succeeds,
<br> it says "I just won the game". What the user might want to know is<br> what that means to him/her. As far as he/she knows, the computer<br> is not even playing this game, so how could it win?<br>
<br>c. If possible, without being irritating, suggest to the user what action<br> he/she could take, especially after an error message.<br><br>In KDE, this is a difficult area, because US English is not the first<br>language for most of us (myself included, I'm originally from the UK).
<br>So if anybody would like some help in phrasing messages, doco, etc,<br>I would be happy to help all I can and will try to write good US English<br>for you - even if it hurts :-) Then we can all get better translations, too.
<br><br>All the best, Ian W.<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>kde-games-devel mailing list<br><a href="mailto:kde-games-devel@kde.org">kde-games-devel@kde.org</a><br><a href="https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-games-devel">
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-games-devel</a><br></blockquote></div><br>