AARGH!!! The help and the interface @#$%^&*!!!

Here everybody can post his problems with PhotoLine
Benutzeravatar
greenmorpher
Mitglied
Beiträge: 943
Registriert: Di 29 Mai 2007 14:42
Wohnort: Rabaul, Papua New Guinea

AARGH!!! The help and the interface @#$%^&*!!!

Beitrag von greenmorpher »

Somehow or other, I just made a little document page without rulers. I wanted rulers. I ran through the menus, particularly the "View" menu. "Show" several things, but not "Show Rulers".

So I went to the Help. Asked for "show rulers" and got 7.3.18 Alignment Helpers/Show Ruler in the 7. The Menus / 7.3 Functions in the Menu View.

This bamboozled me. Now I've worked it out, i can see the logic, but coming from my question, I could not understand what I was looking at.

There is a language problem. In English, there is no such thing as "the Menu View". Well, there kind of might be. "The Menu View" might be what we are seeing when we are viewing a menu instead of, say, a toolbox full of icons. It is what you see in menu mode. And it is not capitalized.

Clearly (now!) this should be "View menu", with "View" capitalized because it is the name of a particular thing, it is a proper noun, and "menu" not capitalized because it is not a proper noun, just the name of that kind of thing that it is.

There are also too many words. You don’t have to say "Functions of the View menu" -- you just say "View menu". Of course what it is is a menu of functions, we know this is a computer program with functions, not a Chinese restaurant with salt and pepper crumbed and deep fried squid listed in the menu.

And then the sub-menu "Alignment Helpers". My eye just skated over this in the View menu when I looked at it. I wasn't seeking to align anything -- I was wanting to know the dimensions. So listing dimension tools under the title "Alignment Helpers" put me off. I expected that sub-menu to be full of stuff about selecting several items on the page, clicking on a command or icon, and they all line up.

Please, let's keep major tools in plain sight, and let's get the language right!

AND just in case of misunderstanding, let's start off each section of this kind with the simple menu steps spelled out in full in the words we are seeing in the PL window on screen e.g. Menu Bar/View/Alignment Helpers/Show Ruler.

That's all I needed to know. :shock:

Cheers, geoff
Juan
Mitglied
Beiträge: 615
Registriert: Do 06 Okt 2011 08:08

Re: AARGH!!! The help and the interface @#$%^&*!!!

Beitrag von Juan »

greenmorpher hat geschrieben:...we know this is a computer program with functions, not a Chinese restaurant with salt and pepper crumbed and deep fried squid listed in the menu.
You just made my day :lol:
greenmorpher hat geschrieben:AND just in case of misunderstanding, let's start off each section of this kind with the simple menu steps spelled out in full in the words we are seeing in the PL window on screen e.g. Menu Bar/View/Alignment Helpers/Show Ruler.
You are so right here, i just made a search in help for rulers and really is misleading the location of the show ruler tool command.

Cheers
Juan

PS. This are the things that I was talking before, PL needs to be polish and put order in the party (Menu, tools, etc) before designing icons or whatever.
Martin Huber
Entwickler
Entwickler
Beiträge: 4298
Registriert: Di 19 Nov 2002 15:49

Re: AARGH!!! The help and the interface @#$%^&*!!!

Beitrag von Martin Huber »

On Mac OS the simplest way for finding a menu command is:

- open the Help menu
- enter your (full or partial) search term (for example "rul" or "ruler")
- use the Down and Up keys for selecting the found menu entries. Mac OS will show you their place in the menu.

Martin
Benutzeravatar
greenmorpher
Mitglied
Beiträge: 943
Registriert: Di 29 Mai 2007 14:42
Wohnort: Rabaul, Papua New Guinea

Re: AARGH!!! The help and the interface @#$%^&*!!!

Beitrag von greenmorpher »

Thank you Martin, I didn’t know it would do that. I've been working on Mac for so long that I just don’t take notice of new interface fiddling. I just set up the new OS, make sure the fonts all work, and away I go working as before (probably much as back in 1985!). :)

That said, PhotoLine's Help/Manual really does need work.

Cheers, geoff