[kde-guidelines] Some comments to KDE-HIG content

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday 12 September 2004 01:35, Thomas Zander wrote:
> The statement was that we should not go to the detail of pixel-spacing in
> the HIG.  That amount of detail is unwanted by the relevant parties.

IIRC we decided to put the "policy enforced" items in a separate area of the 
HIG. this way we can preserve accrued knowledge for people who work now and 
in the future on the libraries w/out creating unnecessary clutter for the 
application developers consulting the HIG.

at the SAME time ... there are a number of issues that Siggie noted that are 
not, indeed can not, be implemented by way of policy. these are issues such 
as consistent widths of widgets within a layout, the spacing of items 
horizonatally across a dialog[1], the spacing of items vertically in a 
dialog[2]

these things need to be there for the app devels to get consistency. things 
like default layout margin and spacer hints go into the Policy sections.

but the need is real. especially for applications outside of KDE's CVS where 
the UI consistency makes KDE's CVS look tight ;-) they need direction, and we 
need a way to say "Yep, your app is KDE Quality!"

and i'd like to suggest we move this discussion to kde-usability-devel where 
it belongs =) i've CC'd it there, but let's not keeping CC'ing back and 
forth? =)


[1] some dialogs use spacers to make widgets take on their minimal size, 
leaving a "troff" on the right, others allow the widgets to expand to the 
full width. well... which is it? =)

[2] this is a simple as saying when to use an expanding spacer between the 
action buttons at the bottom of the dialog and the rest of the widgets above, 
and how much space (if any?) to leave at the top of the dialog (should they 
be top aligned or center aligned vertically, etc)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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