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If you are instructing the user to click a file object in the GUI, its
name should be in bold, if it's your practice to use bold for the
names of things the user clicks.
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 1:14 AM, Jen <jennee -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a dilemma that probably has a simple solution that I can't see...
> I'm documenting an application based on Eclipse and I have to refer to
> files located inside Eclipse projects, but I don't know how to format them.
> For reference purposes I'll use the following image from Eclipse help:
>http://help.eclipse.org/kepler/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/images/Image241_nav_view.png
> .
>
> For example, my procedure would be something like this:
> 1. Open the TestProject project.
> 2. In the Explorer view, under SomeFolder, select AnotherFile.txt.
>
> According to MS Manual of Style 4th ed, "Bold in procedures if the user
> must click the file name or type the name as shown." So far, so good,
> everything should be in bold (<guilabel> in DocBook).
>
> But if I have:
> 1. Open the TestProject project.
> 2. Right-click Test.xml and select Run as Ant Build. The AnotherFile.txt
> file is created under SomeFolder.
>
> In this case, would AnotherFile.txt be in bold or Courier? You're not
> supposed to click it, so it should be formatted like a regular file name
> (<filename> in DocBook, which in my case is output as Courier), but then it
> looks inconsistent... Am I overthinking this?
>
> Thanks,
> Jen
>
>
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