Bill Meier wrote:
OK: Very good feedback.
How about "Save / Don't Save / Cancel " ??
That's the OS X convention for that case.
The example in the GNOME HIG (figure 3.17 on the GNOME HIG page linked
from my previous message) offers "Close without Saving", "Cancel", and
"Save"; that seems to be their recommendation.
The KDE HIG offers "Save", "Discard", and "Cancel".
Microsoft's "Commit buttons for indirect dialog boxes" example offers
"Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel".
One slight problem I have with the OS X/Windows convention is that, at
least early on using OS X applications, it wasn't *immediately* obvious
that "Don't Save" meant "close the window anyway, without saving". From
a quick look at the three styles, I might have a *slight* preference for
the KDE wording, as it arguably most strongly emphasizes in the text of
the button that you're throwing out the data the app has.
However, it might well be that, after you've used a desktop environment
for a while, you respond to the wording sub-consciously, and you'd have
to stop and think (even if only for a second) when confronted with an
unfamiliar button label, so the label used for other apps in the same
environment would be best.
Were we to do that, we could do that on Windows (as we can find out
whether we're running on Windows at compile time), and (sort-of) do that
on OS X ("sort-of" because, for now, we're building with the X11 version
of GTK+, so, in theory, it could be running on OS X but displaying on a
GNOME or KDE desktop), but KDE vs. GNOME vs. some other environment is
trickier.
For now, we can pick one convention, and worry about getting fancier later.