RFC: Tooltips and What's This? Styleguide

[Malcolm Hunter]

Hi,

I'd like to raise a couple of points regarding use of tooltips and What's 
This? messages.

1. One of the proof-readers raised a question: "Should the text be imperative 
or third person singular?" eg. : "Save the file" or "Saves the file"

It seems developers are not consistent at all with this - can we possibly 
agree on a standard? I'd like to see imperative used for tooltips and third 
person singular for What's This?

2. Sometimes tooltips contain exactly the same (or nearly the same) text as 
the What's This? This seems to me to be pretty pointless. I am not decrying 
people that have done this - it's better to have both than none at all. I am 
quite happy to put in some effort to help resolve this by condensing the 
What's This? (if possible). IMO the tooltip should be a short (max 10 words) 
description of the control's function and, if required, the What's This? be 
used to provide more in-depth information.

Is there a styleguide for these? If not, should this be added to the existing 
developer.kde.org styleguide?

Regards,
Malcolm
-- 
KDE Proof Reading Team
KDE British English Translation Team

http://i18n.kde.org/teams/info/en_GB