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Re: Re: Suggestion: Improving language

From: Andy Levy <andy.levy_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 16:43:41 -0500

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 16:21, Eric <zzz2010_at_pby.com> wrote:
>
> The "Revert" dialog box is a better example.  Revert to the last update from SVN?  Revert to an earler local version (like NetBeans)?  The menu choices (and some dialog boxes) are meaningful to SVN users but do little for newcomers. A reference to Subclipse was made earlier in this thread; I have Subclipse installed, but i tend to avoid using it, and a large part of why I avoid it is because of its inconsistent & confusing terminology. AnkhSVN is also guilty of this to a degree.

IMHO, the language needs to be consistent with what's presently used
for the "original" Subversion, otherwise experienced users will have
difficulty using Tortoise, and even more difficulty explaining things
to newcomers.

"Revert" in Subversion always means to undo all local changes that
have not yet been committed.

> Unix and DOS formerly had only a command line interface and this required users to know a great many commands.  GUIs eliminated that: we click on what we need; we don't necessarily care what the actual command is.  But for consistency among tools, perhaps the SVN commands could be in caps: "UPDATE from latest...".

And Windows administration has been moving back toward the command
line (example: PowerShell & Exchange Server 2007). GUIs are not a
panacea, and in many cases this abstraction causes more trouble -
users don't have to think about what they're doing, and don't
understand the implications of ticking a checkbox.

Random words in ALL CAPS is a poor UI design, IMO.

>> > There’s space in the menu to make “Switch” and “Relocate” more
>> > self-explanatory.  We all hate stopping to RTF – especially when every menu
>> > choice has to be looked up.
>>
>> What would you suggest?
>> And remember: those are well known svn commands so we have to stick to that.
>
> Why not "SWITCH to Branch/Tag"?  "RELOCATE working copy" couldn't hurt.  My point is, these menu choices and dialog boxes are so terse that they hardly help guide new/infrequent users.  It's a "click-until-I-recognize-something" interface.  Thankfully, the dialog boxes have a Help button that opens the manual.

Visually those ALL CAPS do hurt, at least to me.

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Received on 2010-12-07 22:44:30 CET

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