[659] in Athena User Interface
Minutes of 2000-01-18 AUI meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (andrew m. boardman)
Fri Jan 26 17:37:47 2001
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:37:42 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200101262237.RAA31525@karst.mit.edu>
From: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>
To: aui@mit.edu
CC: sbjones@mit.edu, debby@mit.edu, timblack@mit.edu, jkramer@mit.edu
[Tim Black and John Kramer are getting this to perhaps fill in some
background on our thoughts on AUI design work; you probably don't want to
read past "1".]
Attending: ajfox amb beland debby ghudson othomas sbjones
1. Icons
Final icon ideas were nailed down; the text label hacks will be backed
out of the trunk sources in favor of labels integrated with the icons.
(This will let us change them at will along with the icons, as well as
letting us use bigger icons; text labels would get stored as state in
user home directories and be a pain to change later.) What we've asked
PSB for to date (and which they've done) are only icons for logout (exit
sign) and xterm (scarlet letter). Unfortulately, PSB is now really hosed
and what they'll be able to do is an open question. John Kramer is our
new contact there.
Icons are: [as recorded by Debby]
- Gnome foot: Keep same icon. Label should read "Menu."
- Mail: Pencil/paper icons confused people. A mailbox icon would be a
good starting point. (Tim may come up with equally good non-mailbox
options.) Label should read "Mail."
- Netscape: Use the 2D Netscape icon. Label should read "Netscape."
- Xterm: Try incorporating "athena%" in one of the window icons.
Window icon should display a complete window, not just a corner.
Label should read "Command prompt" or just "prompt," depending on
space available.
- Text editor: No team requirements for icon look and feel. Label
should read "Emacs."
- Logout: Use the exit sign icon. Label should read "Logout."
2. Usability testing
Usability testing report expected soon. [Test are done; report is still
a work in progress, but the current draft is available at
<http://ma-jones.mit.edu/aui/analysis1.html>.]
3. Panel Menus
Final panel menus will be finalized after the usability test card sorting
exercise is done, but we agree on the basic ideas. The default for
top-level menus is to have them stored in system space; picky power users
will always have the option of changing them to suit; they're also not
our primary audience anyway. (And more to the point, they all run twm anyway.)
The menu/locker functionality is a nice idea but is too hard to implement
for now.
4. Athena release-team stuff
Panel and sawfish are done; ghudson is currently stuck in a twisty maze
of Nautilus library dependencies, all different. We've about given up on
supporting 8-bit displays; everyone in the GNOME world just has to have a
color gradient. We're using the Eazel theme. We're *not* using the
GNOME session management. The current state of the mainline is available
for linux machines in the bleeding-linux cluster; there will probably be
a one-time (or at most very occasional) bleeding-solaris install for
testing there, once we've got something at least vaguely stable.
