=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 8, no. 53 (19 May 2003) Editorial mailing list (digest version) Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A [2yb] UI options: disabled, unavailable, dimmed, grayed (out) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2]-- Q & A -------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 From: Odile Sullivan-Tarazi, odile@mindspring.com Here's a question for those of you working in the computer industry, if you're interested and you've time to respond, of course. Many options in the UI are sensitive to context: enabled in some contexts, disabled in others. Or would that be *unavailable* in others? What are you using in your writing environment and why? The group I work with is currently developing a style guide, and we're trying to nail down various terminology issues. The MS style guide recommends using *unavailable* to describe the option and *dimmed* (not *grayed*) to describe its appearance. The guide further specifies to use *appears dimmed* (not *is dimmed*) and to use *shaded* to describe the appearance of checkboxes that "represent a mixture of settings." It allows the use of *disable* for documentation addressed to the developer, if I'm understanding this entry correctly, but not to the end user. Rather than "disabling a command," for instance, it recommends something along the lines of "making the command unavailable." (Which sounds to me like text addressed to the developer at any rate, so clearly I'm not getting the distinction in this entry.) The guide has no entry for *disabled* (that is, the adjective) in this sense of the word. Sun's *Read Me First* does not address the issue, so far as I can tell. Our corporate guidelines allow *grayed out* and *dimmed*, without noting that these terms should be restricted to description, that is, accompanying some reference to the option's being in an unusable state. (The accessibility folks would be all over us if in our doc we used appearance alone to indicate that the option was not available.) The terminology list includes an entry for *disable*, the verb, but no entry for *disabled*, the adjective, but without further comment or explanation. And there's no entry for *unavailable*. So on the issue of how best to specify that an option is unusable in a given context, the guidelines are silent. My own preference? We routinely use *enabled* for options that are available, and so *disabled* seems the perfect counterpart. Some in our group prefer *unavailable*. My next move would be to hunt through recently published user guides and the like to see what's most commonly in use. But, now that I've discovered this list and its community, I thought I'd check as well with those of you who might have already arrived at a decision on this one. Once our group makes a decision, I would like for it to be well founded. Any comments or insights will be most gratefully received. I feel a bit stuck on this one. ------------------------ Date: Thurs, 15 May 2003 From: Odile Sullivan-Tarazi, odile@mindspring.com Thanks for your many comments and suggestions. I will shift through it all later today, as I ponder this issue. It ought to be such a simple thing, but as we're writing a style guide that all the writers in our group will be following, and now -- with a recent reorg -- all the writers within several other groups as well . . .well, we have to get it rock-solid the first time. There can be no shifting and shallying about. BTW, personally I prefer "grey" as the spelling of the color and it's what I stubbornly stick to using in my own writing. Not that it comes up that much, but when it does, somehow, I need that "e." Grey just doesn't look grey without it. Must be all that Brit lit. Along the same lines, I was astonished to learn, a few years back, that the actual American spelling of "skeptical" is thus, with a "k." It looks like Kafka's spelling of "Amerika" to me, deliberate and alien. Of the four editors in the group that I then worked with, two of us read a steady diet of British literature and one *was* British, so three of us were spelling "sceptical" this way. The way it ought to be spelled. And, again, outside of work, I persist. But the funniest thing was the astonishment on our part when the one editor thoroughly steeped in American lit brought the spelling of this word to our attention. Not a one of us realized we were spelling it in any way out of the ordinary. (This was in the days before widespread email and spell-checkers. There must have been spell-checkers in our word processing packages [Word, FrameMaker, PPT], but I guess it didn't come up that often at work.) ---------------------- Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 From: Viviane Lowe, vivilowe@bluewin.ch Thanks for pointing out the sceptical/skeptical difference. The preference depends on whether your point of reference is latin or greek. If it is the more ancient (principle behind Oxford preference for -ize spellings, I thought), then skeptical is how it ought to be written. Another advantage I can see is that it makes it easier to pronounce: with a c it could be read as a homonym of septic. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 8.53 E-mail address for posting messages or replies: edline@electriceditors.net Admin page: < http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/admin.htm > ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 2002--2003, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996--2003 Iain Brown Compilation (c) 2003 Iain Brown / The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=