[perhaps OT and already discussed] usability standard/recommendation/guildline?

[Jono Bacon]

Zhang Weiwu wrote:

> Hello. I happen to see this comment and table from scribus mailing 
> list. I wonder isn't there a good usability standard or recommendation 
> released from standard group like freedesktop, rather than from one or 
> two single persons about one or two single usability problems? Sorry 
> for wrong post, perhaps I am OT becuase this group is for standard 
> creation not ideas?

It is defficult to define usability on a cross desktop basis. This is 
simply because each desktop is defining different usability constructs 
for their respective applications. As an example, the GNOME and KDE ways 
of doing things are different because they have different ideals in 
where the project should. I think there is a potential for some 
collaboration between the two environments in some parts of usability 
(such as button ordering in a dialog box), but this can only be applied 
if there is no strong usability goal for that portion of the desktop.

I would be interested to see if there are any potential collaborative 
measures we could take with freedesktop.org and determine how much buy 
in KDE, GNOME, Qt, GTK, wxwindows and other software would get. Any 
thoughts?

    Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon - http://www.jonobacon.org/
Writer / Journalist / Consultant / Developer