[kde-guidelines] Style Guide Exceptions

[zander at kde.org]

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 02:11:39PM -0500, Matt Rogers wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since there's a new style guide in the works, i'm curious to know how 
> exceptions to the rule are going to be handled. For example, Kopete has a 
> multi-line input widget, and therefore uses Ctrl+Enter as the default for 
> sending messages (as specified in the current style guide). This is, of 
> course, configurable so that users can use Enter to send a message, however 
> Enter makes a much more sensible default from a usability point of view 
> (style guide be damned, so to speak).
> 
> So, to get to the point, how are exceptions to the rule in the style guide 
> going to be handled, or is there not even a need to worry about this sort of 
> thing for the new guidelines?

What a strange question;  you ask us to explain how we are going to describe
when applications are allowed to ignore the HIG?
In the original styleguide the advices was always to take all issues into
account and come up with the best soltion on an individual basis.
And as there are no books that can explain coding practices with 100% accuracy
(goto _is_ usefull in some cases) this guide will never be able to give 100%
answer to all issues.

A comment on your example;
the first IM tool that gained populairity was the original ICQ for windows and
mac. That used ctrl-enter as a shortcut and many people got used to that.
Note that this was approx 9 years ago..
Later the Microsoft alternatives got an even broader appeal and made people
get used to just 'enter'.
So; this is a classic example where you can argue all you want, but learned
behavior will always be the 'best' way for each individually.  Just like
ok/cancel order for Mac may be more sane; but Windows users are _never_
going to get the level of comfort with it as they have on their first-platform.

In cases like this there is only one advice the HIG will give; it will pick
one on concensus and say that that one has to be the default.  If applications
dont follow that default the current, sad, situation will only stay around
for much longer to everyones annoyance.

so the: "style guide be damned, so to speak."  sounds to me like the author
is writing the software for himself (or his vocal friends) and not for the
userbase as a whole.

This is naturally all my personal opinion..
-- 
Thomas Zander
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