[kde-guidelines] Conventions in the HIG

[Aurélien Gâteau]

On Wednesday 05 June 2013 17:46:45 you wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 June 2013 17:18:54 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > On 05.06.2013 17:05, Aurélien Gâteau wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Now that we are getting more and more stuff documented in the HIG, I
> > > think
> > > it makes sense to adopt some standards: the sooner we do this the less
> > > we
> > > have to fix.
> > 
> > Good idea!
> > 
> > > = Terminology =
> > > == "widget" vs "control" ==
> > > 
> > > I expect all Qt developers to be familiar with the word "widget" to
> > > refer
> > > to what other OSes or toolkits call a "control". I would suggest using
> > > "widget" everywhere.
> > 
> > Does the term "Widget" in the QML + Components world as well? If it
> > does, than we can use widget. If it's only common in the QWidget world,
> > this may be problematic for people who start with creating QML UIs for
> > Desktop applications.
> 
> No the QML world does not use the "widget" term, I assume this was done on
> purpose to avoid confusion between widget-based code and QML-based code.
> 
> The most generic visual element in QML is called an "Item", which is really,
> well, generic. The visual elements which are supposed to look like native
> applications used to be call "Qt Desktop components", but they are being
> renamed to "Qt Quick Controls" [1].
> 
> It's a bit of a mess, really, not sure what to take out of this.

I have been thinking about this a bit more. Applications based on kdelibs 4.x 
and early kde frameworks 5.x, will be mostly widget based, but in the long 
term we probably want to migrate applications to QML. Since we don't want the 
HIG to become obsolete too fast :) I suggest picking "Control", which sounds 
more generic to me. Opinions?

> > > == Others ==
> > > 
> > > Any other terms we should standardize on?
> > > 
> > > = Screenshots =
> > > 
> > > Our current screenshots story is a mess. Some are mockups, some are done
> > > with Designer using the Oxygen style, yet others are using Designer with
> > > the Plastique style.
> > > 
> > > I personally think the HIG would look more polished with screenshots
> > > made
> > > using Designer and the Oxygen style. It also will help developers to
> > > compare their UI with our references. Furthermore, using Designer makes
> > > it easier to adjust screenshots later. I understand Designer can be
> > > painful to use, I am happy to help creating any Designer files if need
> > > be.
> > 
> > +1. A consistent look helps a lot here.
> > Another reason for storing the ui files used for the screenshots in a
> > central repository: If the default style used by KDE changes in the
> > future, we can simply make the screenshots again with the new one to
> > keep up to date. That would still be quite some work, but it should be
> > doable

[snip]

I am happy to redo existing screenshots with Designer if we agree on this. 
Hopefully the git repository can then also serve as good starting points to 
create more screenshots. Shall I proceed?

Aurélien