RE: Tabbed dialogs

["Cascio, Justin" <Justin_Cascio -at- tvratings -dot- com>]

In my previous job, we wrote Paragraph Designer dialog box - Basic tab. In
this position, we only refer to the Basic tab once we're speaking in the
context of the Paragraph Designer dialog box (which we call windows here,
for some reason). Although the first example is very long, you would not
often have to name the entire dialog. In procedures, you'd explain how to
open the dialog box, and then you could note that the Basic tab is the first
one displayed, and to click the Other tab to do other things, etc.
My two schekels,
Justin

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy -dot- Kubrin -at- tanner -dot- com [mailto:Andy -dot- Kubrin -at- tanner -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 1:46 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Tabbed dialogs


Whirlers,

Reading the thread on menu commands reminds me of a piece of unfinished
business around here.

How do you (does one) refer to individual tabs of a dialog?  For example, do
you write "Paragraph Designer dialog, Basic tab"?  "Paragraph Designer
(Basic)"?  Some other variant?

After spirited debate, our doc group settled on "Paragraph Designer--Basic,"
with an em-dash in place of the hyphens, but I've never been satisfied with
this solution.  I haven't seen it in other documentation, so I'm not sure
our users will be familiar with it.  (And we haven't surveyed them down to
this level of detail.)  It also makes for klunky cross-refs, like "You can
set this option in the Paragraph Designer--Basic (page xxx) dialog."

So I'd be interested in hearing from others on this monumental topic.

FWIW, we use the greater than sign between menu and command.

Thanks.

Andy

Andy Kubrin
Manager, Documentation Group
Tanner Research, Inc.                          E-mail
andy -dot- kubrin -at- tanner -dot- com
2650 E. Foothill Blvd.                          Phone (626) 792-3000
Pasadena, CA  91107                           Fax   (626) 432-5705
http://www.tanner.com/eda/


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