| From: | |
| Date: | 28 Feb 2001 at 03:38:01 |
| Subject: | Re: Ellipsis notation with interactive commands (style-guide issue) |
On 28-Feb-01, Allan Odgaard wrote:
> Dear list, let me once again go a little bit off topic,
> According to a book I read, the convention about placing three dots
> after interactive commands (e.g. "Save as...") originates from Apples
> Lisa and was later adopted by the Macintosh, Commodore Amiga,
> Microsoft Windows and Motif.
> However, according to this book they should only be used when the
> dialog box following the command issued needs additional info from
> the user (thus can also be aborted).
> So it would be wrong to have a menu item named "About..." or "New
> window...", since these do not require additional info from the user.
> I don't have the Amiga style-guide, so I cannot check if C= modified
> the convention when they adopted it. If not then we sure have a lot
> of programs which violate it... I just looked at Workbench and here
> we have "About...", "New drawer" and "Information..." which are all
> wrong according to the original convention. Actually, even if C= did
> modify the convention to say "commands opening additional windows"
> then Workbench still violate it...
> Any comments?
> Kind regards Allan
I would say you are partially right, as far as I know, "..." has always
been a pseudonym for "*AND SO ON*" in English &
is used to indicate an incomplete list of items displayed,
a list of items not completely displayed for aesthetic reasons
or that there is more information or interaction to follow.
The important differenciation being in the function.
1) Information - About - Docs - Help, etc.
Use "..." to indicate that there is more info to follow,
but not displayed at this time.
2) User interactivity - user options, etc.
Use "..." to indicate that there is more interaction required
before the function is complete, OR, there are several
option to choose from before it can complete.
However, the meaning described by the label is usually & frequently
beyond the scope of describing the function in its entirety,
to anyones complete satisfaction.
Youre example:
>"About...", "New drawer" and "Information..."
"About..." contains no actual information by the word itself,
however inside, it contains kick version,
wb version, copyright notices, dates, etc...
The "about" word is insufficient to describe the total
scope of the function in itself, so "About..." is used.
"New Drawer" contains enough information to make the function
operate without any further information from the user,
the prompt string "Rename_Me" is optionally changable.
"Information..." again, contains no actual information by itself.
Inside, it contains not just one source of information,
but several options & a collection of other things that
can be done there. Therefore it has to say "..."
as the entire scope of the "Information" function cannot
adequately be represented by one word.
Regards
Colin Wenzel. Quensland, Australia.
EMAIL: colinwenzel@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.hotkey.net.au/~colstv/
AMIGA: 4000T, 68060/50, 150Mb RAM,
OS 3.9, Spectrum Gfx Card + P96.
Need an Image Generator For CATV ??
http://connect.to/products
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