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Bug 309707 - Change "Dialog" menu to "Window"
Change "Dialog" menu to "Window"
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: GIMP
Classification: Other
Component: User Interface
2.3.x
Other All
: High enhancement
: 2.6
Assigned To: GIMP Bugs
GIMP Bugs
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-07-07 13:06 UTC by Alan Horkan
Modified: 2008-05-22 15:44 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Alan Horkan 2005-07-07 13:06:17 UTC
I brought this up on the gimp developer mailing lists in the context of the menu
reorganisation for the next release and it seems to have been relatively well
received.  
I would like to see the Dialogs menu renamed to Windows and potentially improved
to include a few additional dock and window management related functionality
(Close All, list of current images, etc. Reference screenshot of how Adobe use
the Window menu: http://www.arraich.com/images/PS7/bbasic_WindowMenu.gif)


The rest of this bug is as much for the British English team as it for the GIMP
developers and it provides additional motivation for changing the menu label.  

The British English translation of the GIMP was changed to use Dialogue rather
than Dialog.  This looks very very weird.  
The British English translation rules say not to translate the word "Program". 
I believe the reasoning for this is because the word was backported from
American and in the context of computers the word Program is always used as
shorthand for "Computer Program" as opposed to "Television Programme".  
For the same reason I believe Dialog should not be have been translated in this
context.  
Rather than simply revert this change I want to change to a a term that does not
require localisation and encourage translators to be more proactive and suggest
changes to the American spellings in cases where potentially better neutral
words are available.  Less inconsistencies and a more International flavour of
English makes it easier to reuse the same documentation and potentially makes
things easier to understand for non native English speakers who for whatever
reason choose to use their computer through English.
Comment 1 Sven Neumann 2005-07-07 13:16:11 UTC
Can't say anything on the british/canadian translation but I think that Window
is the wrong term to use for what is the Dialogs menu now. The contents in this
menu are not windows, they are probably not even dialogs. They refer to palettes
or inspectors or whatever you want to call our dockables. These dockables are
usually combined with other dockables, sharing a common window. For that reason
it does IMO not make sense to use the term Window here.
Comment 2 Alan Horkan 2005-07-07 16:20:58 UTC
I agree Dialogs and Window are two similarly poor choice of label for this menu.
  Although Window is not a huge improvement it is at least consistent with what
many graphics users have come to expect from the products of Adobe and others. 
Many other applications include a Window menu with a list of currently open
windows, alhtough Adobe relegates that information to a submenu in its version
of the Windo menu.  
I'm not dead set the Window label and would love to hear better suggestions.  
Comment 3 weskaggs 2005-07-07 17:46:58 UTC
IMHO "dialogs" is not great but "Windows" is even worse, because in other apps,
"Windows" refers to things that are already open.  It is hard to think of a more
accurately descriptive title that isn't too long.  ("Item Selector/Viewer/Editors"?)
Comment 4 Alan Horkan 2005-07-07 17:53:30 UTC
It is Window, as in Window Management (sorry if I accidentally wrote Windows
before).  I am amazed you think this is worse than Dialogs because Window at
least gives the Photoshop trolls one less thing to complain about and
incorporates the ideas GimpShop has help show a lot of people really do want.  
Comment 5 Sven Neumann 2005-07-07 20:28:09 UTC
PS uses toggle buttons to show the state (open/closed) of the windows in that
menu. That makes some sense but we would loose the nice menu icons.
Comment 6 ungeschlagen 2005-07-10 21:15:14 UTC
Change the Dialog-term? :-O
haha, good luck, that will come to a long, hard discussion!
Comment 7 Michael Natterer 2005-09-21 19:51:16 UTC
So what now? "Windows" is wrong because they are not windows. Strictly
speaking they are not "Dialogs" either, but it's still much closer than
"Windows". I don't think we can me the purpose of each submenu 100% clear
from its label, you still have to look instde the menu to be sure what
it's about (no matter how clear the submenu label is).

So unless somebody comes up with a term that fits the situation better
than "Dialogs", we should close this as NOTABUG or WONTFIX.
Comment 8 Michael Natterer 2005-09-21 19:53:53 UTC
Um well, I see this bug is also about managing open image windows, which
is of course a valid request. Ignore the last comment about closing the
bug, it was only related to the "Dialogs" -> "Windows" change.
Comment 9 Raphaël Quinet 2006-03-14 15:34:07 UTC
The part about "managing open image windows" would make a lot of sense if a
future version of GIMP supports the window-in-window MDI model as described
in bug #7379.  Otherwise, some actions such as "Tile" and "Cascade" (as shown
in the Adobe screenshot linked above) would be difficult to implement.

Without MDI, the Windows/Documents menu could only be used to raise some
windows (that are managed by a window manager outside of GIMP's control).
With MDI, additional options such as "Cascade", "Tile" and maybe "Arrange
Icons" could also be implemented.  Well, they could be implemented in both
cases, but they have a better chance to work right in the second case.
Assuming that some volunteer works on bug #7379, of course.
Comment 10 weskaggs 2006-08-30 16:54:28 UTC
Triaging bug reports that have been sitting Unconfirmed for a long time:

I am going to resolve this as WONTFIX because, although the idea is not horribly unreasonable, it is clear from the comments that this isn't going to happen.  The suggestion for more window-management functionality is very reasonable, but needs a separate bug report -- it is too difficult to extract the relevant ideas from this one.
Comment 11 Calum Benson 2008-05-10 11:25:55 UTC
Why not ask a suitable sample of users what they call the different objects on the screen, and where there's reasonable consensus, use those names?  Fairly basic task analysis stuff.  ("Suitable" in this case probably means biased towards inexperienced GIMP users who aren't already familiar with all the existing terminology, but with a range of experience of other graphics and illustration packages.)
Comment 12 Michael Natterer 2008-05-10 11:39:54 UTC
Incidentially, we just yesterday agreed at LGM that we want to do
this :-) Thanks for finding the old closed bug.

Reopening and setting milestone.
Comment 13 Michael Natterer 2008-05-10 16:21:42 UTC
Step 1:

2008-05-10  Michael Natterer  <mitch@gimp.org>

	Start changing the "Dialogs" menu to "Windows", still incomplete.
	Addresses bug #309707.

	* app/actions/Makefile.am
	* app/actions/windows-actions.[ch]
	* app/actions/windows-commands.[ch]: new files which currently
	hold the "show toolbox" action and callback and new code which
	maintains automatically generated actions for accessing (raising)
	all open images.

	* app/actions/actions.c: register the new "windows" action group.

	* app/actions/dialogs-actions.c
	* app/actions/dialogs-commands.[ch]: remove "show toolbox"
	action and callback and also the action for the "Disalogs" menu.

	* app/menus/Makefile.am
	* app/menus/windows-menu.[ch]: new files which create and destroy
	the menu items for the image window actions.

	* app/menus/menus.c: register the "windows" action group with
	all UI managers that have the "dialogs" action group.

	* app/menus/image-menu.c (image_menu_setup): call
	windows_menu_setup().

	* app/gui/gui.c: s/dialogs_show_toolbox/windows_show_toolbox/g

	* menus/image-menu.xml.in: some minor s/dialogs/windows/
	and add the "Images" submenu.
Comment 14 Michael Natterer 2008-05-22 15:44:39 UTC
This is finished now in SVN trunk. Closing as FIXED.