[kde-guidelines] One HIG to rule them all

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Tuesday 08 September 2015 00:27:25 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> A group of people has convened to think about the HIGs for mobile, and we
> came to the conclusion that, given that we want applications to be
> available cross- platform (though with an optimized UI for each class of
> devices), the mobile HIG should not be separated form the desktop HIG.
> Therefore, the idea was to have everything in one place, with "Every HIG
> applies to all devices until it says otherwise" as the default and explicit
> exceptions in the  the cases where the ideal design is different between
> device classes.

Now that we've created the first phone HIGs, it looks like maybe this approach 
is not optimal after all, given that some patterns/widgets are completely 
platform-specific (e.g. the drawers we use on mobile have no direct 
counterpart in desktop UIs).

Now the idea is (based on a suggestion by Alex L) to reorganize the HIG as 
follows:
At this point we'd have these sections: 
- General
- Desktop
- Phone
- Tablet/Active

New sections would be created if the HIG were to encompass more device classes 
later.

The General section pages would describe everything that affects all form 
factors (fundamental rules like "When to use a list box vs. a combobox" or 
labeling guides, the device-specific pages would describe only the dvice-
specific parts.

A HIG user may use any of the sections as an entrance point, and then generic 
information or that about other device classes would be linked to from there 
so that we would not need to duplicate any information.

Therefore, at the point when a developer/designer is focusing on a GUI for a 
specific device class, they would only have to read the HIGs that are relevant 
to that device class (for example a mobile dev would not have care about the 
accelerators and shortcuts HIG), while for those which are relevant to others 
as well, they can just follow the links.

Does that make sense to you?
If yes, I'd separate the existing HIGs into the general/desktop/phone parts 
(Active has been separate up to now anyway) and do the linking. This won't 
happen over night since it would be a huge effort, and if you agree that this 
is a good way forward, I'd hope for others to help with it since it's a huge 
effort.

So, what do you guys think?
Best,
Thomas