Re: How uniform can GUI clients be?

On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 08:36:30AM -0500, Mark Murphy wrote:
> Rather than focusing on the differences, maybe we can start listing
> places where we can be the same.

Good Idea!

> For instance, I think all the GUI environments we've been talking about
> support two main types of menus: window menus (the kind that drop down
> from a bar just under the window title bar) and context menus (the kind
> that pop up when you perform a platform-specific type of mouse click on
> an object).

Yup.

> While we may depict a folder/directory differently, the context menu
> operations to be performed on one should be fairly consistent (i.e.,
> add, remove, update all, commit all, ... for a folder/directory).
> Similarly, most of the options off of the window menus should be
> similar. There are still likely to be platform-dependent options in both
> types of menus, but we can probably get 80% consistency. After all, the
> goal behind uniform GUIs should be transferable knowledge (if I know GUI
> A, I can figure out GUI B quickly) vs. absolute identical functionality.
>
> Thoughts?

Here is what I was thinking of something like the following for the
window menus.

File
    Repository - for choosing server/repository/authentication/etc.
    Exit - I'll let you figure it out

Edit
    Checkout
    Update - update currently selected item (if any).
    Update All
    Commit - commit currently selected item (if any).
    Commit All

View
    As Unified Tree - view tree Mac Style with folders and files.
    As Tree - view Windows Explorer style, tree and pane of files
    As ???? - view Windows style where just current dir is shown
    ---
    Differences
    Status
    Log

Help
    The usual stuff.

For context menus I was thinking along the lines of
Update
Commit
Status
Log
Differences

As for overall design, I was thinking of either a two or three paned
thing, something Outlook or Outlook Express. I.e. in my best ascii art.

+---------------------------+ +-------+---------------+
| | | | |
| Hierarchy for unified or | | tree | Files |
| windows style | | | (for explorer)|
| | | | |
+---------------------------+ or +-------+---------------+
| | | |
| Info, i.e. contents, diff | | |
| status, log, etc | | same |
| | | |
+---------------------------+ +-----------------------+

Or, and this would probably be more consisten with Outlook, have the
tree come all the way down on the left, then have the right split top to
bottom with Files, and info.

What do people think about something like this.

Please fee free to add more menu options, move them around, etc.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Pilch-Bisson
kevin@pilch-bisson.net
http://www.pilch-bisson.net
PGP Public Key At http://pgp.pilch-bisson.net