[maemo-developers] GtkAction vs. AppMenu

[From: Murray Cumming]

On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 05:08 +0200, Alberto Garcia wrote:
> > > Toggle-like radio buttons are quite common too in many user
> > > interfaces.
> > Not that I can think of.
> 
> Well, I haven't made a list :) but out of the blue I can think at
> least of the GIMP, Audacity, OpenOffice/MS Word/Abiword/Gnumeric,
> the iPhone...

Where I can find examples of these, it seems to be where space
constraints make a real radio button difficult to use. Such as the
alignment buttons in the OpenOffice toolbar.

But Maemo Fremantle suggests their use _always_, for some other
unexplained reason. This suggests that it's just about the cosmetic
appearance, suggesting that it's an issue for the theme. Otherwise it's
just another tedious #ifdef to add to code when porting to Maemo.

>  and I'd swear I saw them in the Moblin 2 UI too. But I
> wasn't only thinking about computer interfaces, they're used in some
> home appliances too.

Home appliances generally have awful UI and have very little UI
consistency. You'll find plenty of prior art for design mistakes in the
home. That lack of consistency means that there can be no meaningful
convention to differentiate between toggle buttons and radio buttons
there anyway.

However, I'm was asking about the API and implementation, because the
Fremantle UI guidelines are really out of our control at this point.


-- 
murrayc at murrayc.com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com