Naming cells in a grid

[Patrick Wright <pdoubleya -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Hi

I'm writing about an applicatin which includes a "spreadsheet"-style
grid. The grid is both editable and updated in realtime, and there are
a number of cases where the manual needs to refer to either the grid
or specific cells on the grid.

Oh, this app runs on Windows, so generally I'm following the Windows
style guide; but haven't see guidelines for this situation.

I'd like to establish conventions for talking about the columns and
cells on the grid.

I'll give a fake example (to not run afoul of non-disclosure
agreements). I am monitoring items I have for sale in an online
auction. My grid has one row for each item I have posted for sale. The
columns headers are

item-desc, low-bid, high-bid, low-high diff, target, high-target-diff,
cost, est-profit

which are
  item-desc: a description of the item
  low-bid: current low bid on the auction
  high-bid: current low bid on the auction
  low-high diff: difference between low and high bids
  target: minimum I'd like to receive 
  high-target-diff: difference between current high bid and target
  cost: cost of the item (to me)
  est-return: difference between high bid and cost (profit or loss)


Some use-cases for descriptions follow. "You" is the person selling
the items; ** means the text is highlighted (boldface):

1) If the item's high bid and low bid are the same, they will both be
coloured red

2) If the estimated return is positive, you have a profit, and the
estimated return will be coloured green. If it is negative, you have a
loss, and the estimated return will be coloured red.

3) The target column shows the amount you would like to receive for
the item, that is, the minimum bid you would like to accept. The cost
column shows the amount it costs you to produce or supply the item.

4) To hide the low bid for an item, open the context menu for the
item, choose *Hide Column*, and select *Low Bid* from the submenu.

5) To add a popup alert the first time a profit is projected for the
sale of an item, open the *Notify* menu, and choose Alerts. On the
*Alerts* dialogue, select the *Notify me on projected profit*
checkbox, then click *OK*.


Questions:

1) When is it better to refer to a column by on-screen name
("low-bid"), and when by the logical name ("the item's low bid")?

2) Should I use the words "column" and "cell", for example, "the
low-bid column" or "the item's low-bid cell"?

3) Should the column or cell names be highlighted, e.g boldface, as
they are GUI elements (like a button), or should I use italics,
quotes...?

4) Is there a good generic term for "grid" in this case, that is, the
block of rows and their columns? This application has more than one
grid on-screen.


Many thanks
Patrick

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