On Sat, 25 Nov 2006, Bob Jamison wrote:
Not a stupid question. Not Mac specific either.
All dialogs are not created equal. Some dialogs need to be treated differently but historically Sodipodi/Inkscape treated all dialogs as if they were intended to be left open all the time and needed a very compact layout.
Palette/Panel dialogs need to be small and compact as they are intended to be left open all or most of the time. Having buttons for close at the bottom of the dialog is a big waste of space in these dialogs, and from other programs users do not really expect these to have buttons at the bottom, just use the window decoration (usually an X on the top right) or the corresponding menu item to close/hide them.
Big spacious transitory dialogs which are not intended to be left open all the time are quite different. They should always have buttons at the bottom of the dailog if developers want to follow the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (and Inkscape has that as a goal).
We have argued a lot,
I dont recall arguing with you particularly but if you say so
but this is one of the best descriptions of the different types of dialogs that I have ever seen. You should maybe generify it and send to some online publisher. An excellent discourse, sir!
The Gnome HIG needs a section on Panels/Palettes to make things clearer for projects like Inkscape. Perhaps I can incorporate some of the Guidelines created for GPE (Gnome Palmtop Enviroment). It is one of those many things I just haven't gotten around to yet.