Subject: Re: fields design -- a near-trivial question
From: Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com)
Date: Tue Mar 14 2000 - 23:23:34 CST
If this is going to be visible to the user, DEFINATELY "Real case". It is
very bad UI to present the user with choices that are not in English, and
a hybrid of words is not real english. I don't see what some programmers
have against using English in GUI's. I can't see any reason why the fields
couldn't be represented internally with spaces, but if there is any good
reason I'd voulenteer to make name conversion functions :).
BTW MS Word 6 for Mac really got criticism for naming buttons (I think)
names like "ThisButtonName". Mac people don't put up with names like that,
and I wouldn't expect users of any other platform to in church-secretary
level software.
Aaron Lehmann
On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Paul Rohr wrote:
> Since Keith has shamed me into digging back through his original fields
> proposal, I thought I'd toss a trivial design question out there to see what
> people think.
>
> What should our naming convention be for field types?
>
> 1. alllowercase
> 2. MixedCase
> 3. mostlyMixedCase
> 4. what_eric_started_with
> 5. lukes-latest-variant
>
> This is essentially a stylistic question, but it might help to think about
> which precedent we'd like to follow for maximum readability. The places
> these field types are most likely to appear are:
>
> - in the file format
> - in the Insert Field dialog
> - in the object model used for scripting
>
> Thus, I'm not sure whether the relevant precedent should be:
>
> - the Word UI
> - the RTF file format
> - conventions for various scripting languages (JavaScript, Python, etc.)
>
> Since we're going to be changing the file format anyhow (to add field
> containers), I'd prefer that we settle this issue once to minimize future
> disruptions.
>
> Would someone be willing to spend a little time investigating the various
> alternatives here? Seeding consensus with a well-researched suggestion
> would be a heck of a lot better than a mini-flame-war based on personal
> preferences.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
>
>
>
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