[kde-guidelines] Some simple updates to the HIG

[Andrew Lake]

After looking our discussion with developers about the HIG at Akademy, and
the recent release of the new GNOME HIG, I got a little motivated to look
at some simple updates we could make to the HIG that improve things a bit
while preserving the excellent work that has gone into it already.

A couple things I want to get out of the way. Much like my feelings about
KDE software, I think we can use the tools and approaches we already have
available to make the HIG even better than it is today. That's not saying
new tools and approaches can't be beneficial, they absolutely can, but I
don't think we have to wait for them to make things better today.

So here are some simple updates I'd like to propose:
Before: https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG
After: https://userbase.kde.org/User:Andrew/HIG

The updates are:
- The Baxley model for the HIG is unchanged. In fact, I restored some
pieces that had strayed from the model in the current HIG.  While I
initially wondered whether the Baxley model content structure is the best
way to communicate interface guidelines, I took a stab a just trying to
improve the navigation of the HIG instead of its content structure. With
the updates, I think it actually communicates our guidelines quite well.
(Of course we can validate this by testing with a few developers and
designers.)
- All of guidance from the current HIG remains completely accessible. We're
not losing anything with these updates.
- For the landing page I went for getting as much of the information above
the "fold" as possible.
- The "Getting Started" section is technically the "Structure" section in
the Baxley model. The only reason I decided to do that is to give HIG users
a very clear starting point. Designers and developers really need to know
the overall design principles, come up with their project vision, personas
and scenarios, then try to understand the information architecture of their
potential application before launching into design and development.
- I tried to make both the landing page and the section pages more
scannable by putting the name of the linked guidance up front and
preserving the sentence that previously contained the link.
- The sections contain the same information as they do now, but on their
own pages. In a few instances I fleshed out a few unpopulated subsections
with the guidance that we already had in the HIG that was applicable to
that section but wasn't linked yet.
- The Presentation section has been restored to the Baxley model with
Layout and Text as a high-level subsection alongside Style. This should
make it easier to find Layout and Text guidelines.
- On the landing page I tried to provide some keywords in the natural
language text describing some sections to provide a little extra help to
find the section of interest. So whether by visual scanning or doing a
find-in-page search, it should be a little easier.
- I added a controls list section under Resources so that if HIG users are
just looking for guidelines on how to use a specific control they can get
to it quickly.

The GNOME folks did a great job with their guidelines (
https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/). With these updates I think our
HIG comes pretty damn close if not better in a few areas. This is not
intended to be the one and only set of changes that will address every
outstanding HIG concern, but I think this a good update that'll help get us
the rest of the way. I hope you agree.

Let me know if it's ok to "ship it!". :-)

Andrew

P.S. One day I'll wriet an email that's not so long, sorry!
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