Subject: Word count nitpicks
From: Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com)
Date: Sat Mar 25 2000 - 20:52:53 CST
Hello,
I just had a chance to try out the word count dialog for the first time
(on unix). Here are a few comments about it:
1) The labels are centered. I think they would lock better left-alligned.
But that's just my opinion.
2) This dialog is implemented as a modal dialog, but I'm not quite sure
why. If a dialog is asking a critical question that needs to be answered
before the program can continue, it should probably be modal, but I don't
see the reason here. I think it would be nice if you could keep the dialog
around and hit a Recount button periodically. Also, there is no indication
that the main window is not accepting input, but I think this is being
discussed in the "focus" thread.
3) The word count menu item has three periods after it. Doen't this mean
that the command requires information from the user to complete? That's
what the Apple human interface manual says, and I don't know if it was
inherited by other platforms. All menu commands in AbiWord that bring up a
dialog have a "..." after them, and the only two I can find that should
not according to the preceding definition are "About AbiWord Personal..."
and "Word Count...".
Other than these, the word count dialog looks great. It's much better than
the one I have used in old revisions of MS Word where the user had to
press "Count" to get any numbers and then wait a few second for it to
tally the figures.
Aaron Lehmann
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