GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 338029
"Close" button for Information and Error Alerts
Last modified: 2020-12-04 18:20:07 UTC
The recommended label is now "OK" for the lower-right button. This is inconsistent with other recommendations: * [1] suggests to "label all buttons with imperative verbs". * [2] uses "Close" for Property Windows, and they usually present information as well (on user request). [1] http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-buttons.html [2] http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/windows-utility.html#property-windows
It's certainly not very tactful to have an "OK" button on some alerts, because the situation is anything but "OK". I'd agree that "Close" seems more appropriate for the generic case.
Unfortunately "Close" in an alert would usually make it unclear what would be closed. Would it be the the alert, the parent window, or the entire program? I think that alone makes this suggestion unworkable. "OK", while sometimes aggravatingly optimistic, has the benefit that it's extremely short -- so it's easy to see at a glance that the button isn't trying to say anything important. What we really want, for error alerts, is something along the lines of "Apology Accepted" (since the software is apologizing for making a mistake) but shorter. Other languages might have an applicable word or phrase, but I don't think English does. The closest I've seen is in the old XV image viewer, which had error alerts with buttons labelled "Drat" and "Bother", but they're both probably a little too informal.
I largely agree with comment 2, and I really like "Apology Accepted". I've incorporated this here: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-devel-docs/commit/?id=80fe6aa61a8093014fbddf26cbc9ade57e6c234a