Re: Gtk version getting closer

[Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp>]

Karl Eichwalder <keichwa@gmx.net> writes:
> > Where the menu item's text is self-explanatory, there usually is no
> > tooltip that pops up.  In other words, tooltips for menu items
> > should be defined only where they are really needed.
> 
> That's even worth ;)  If you want to sell a product consistency is an
> important issue.  The ideal goal should be: all or nothing.  If
> tooltips appear only now and then, the user might think there is
> something broken.

Tooltips in Gnome (at least on my system!) are often `consistent' to the
point of stupidity:  in many cases a tooltip is popped up with _exactly_
the same text as the menu item or for icons, the same text repeated
_twice_ in the tooltip (presumably one line is the `label' and the other
is the `description')!  This not only seems odd, it seems broken.
Clearly in many cases it's really the fault of the application or the
user that added an icon or whatever without a good description -- but
that's the real world, such things exist.

Perhaps it would be better to could pop up a tooltip that says
`This tooltip intentionally left blank'...

The way I use tooltips is to pause over something and wait to see if
something pops up; if nothing does, I just think `oh there's no tooltip
for that.'  Maybe I'm wierd, but since I gained this habit by using
non-emacs programs (emacs being a relative newcomer to using tooltips), I
think there must be something to it.

[Indeed, it would seem that Gnome's insistence on `consistency' in this
case may actually be damaging, by actually _causing_ people to think that
`everything must have a tooltip']

-Miles
-- 
`...the Soviet Union was sliding in to an economic collapse so comprehensive
 that in the end its factories produced not goods but bads: finished products
 less valuable than the raw materials they were made from.'  [The Economist]