SUSE/doc-styleguide

Revise the term 'drop-down box'

dariavladykina opened this issue · 8 comments

dariavladykina commented

Does the term 'drop-down box' reflect the design of drop-down options in our docs?
Will it make sense to update it to a more conventional term, 'drop-down list'?

cwickert commented

There are two questions to this:

  1. Drop-down or dropdown? drop-down is the correct spelling, however dropdown is more popular.

  2. Is it a box, list, or menu? We use box because this is what the widget is called in various GUI toolkits: Gtk has GtkComboBox and Qt QComboBox. However this is only relevant for programmers, users either use menu or list. According to Google Trends menu is more popular than list (in most countries) and almost nobody uses box, see https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22dropdown%20list%22,%22dropdown%20menu%22,%22dropdown%20box%22

Wikipedia uses list, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop-down_list

This being said, I'd vote for "drop-down list".

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cwickert commented

Related term: "list box", currently defined as "noun; GUI element that is a list showing multiple elements even before interacting with it".

We would need to change both.

  • If we go for list, drop-down box becomes drop-down list but list box becomes just list. Is this too confusing?
  • If we go for menu, it's more distinct: drop-down menu vs. list.
dariavladykina commented

There is also this entry: menu: GUI element that is a list whose entries each start an action; see also drop-down box.

With this in mind, I propose to replace 'drop-down box' with drop-down list.
I suggest keeping the list box as it is.

dmpop commented

I'm with Christoph on this one. I'd prefer to keep it simple and use drop-down list as a term for list boxes and, um, lists.

dariavladykina commented

I'm with Christoph on this one. I'd prefer to keep it simple and use drop-down list as a term for list boxes and, um, lists.

OK, but again, we have the following entries in our Terminology, and they are interconnected:

menu
noun; GUI element that is a list whose entries each start an action; see also drop-down box

drop-down box
noun; GUI element with a list that can be opened by clicking on it, whether combined with a text box or not; if list entries start actions, use menu instead

list box
noun; GUI element that is a list showing multiple elements even before interacting with it

Suggestion:

  • replace 'drop-down box' with drop-down list
  • keep list box as it is
  • keep menu as it is
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jfaltenbacher commented

I am in favor of Daria's proposal.
However, for list box we could do it like MS recommends:
When you need to help a customer interact with UI, refer to a list box by its label and the word list, not list box.
See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/a-z-word-list-term-collections/l/list-box

Just for completeness: for dropdown they recommend the following:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/a-z-word-list-term-collections/d/dropdown

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dariavladykina commented

Thanks, I support MS recommendation on list box.

Let us then include the following:
When you need to help the user to interact with UI, refer to a list box by its label and the word 'list', not 'list box'.

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dariavladykina commented

Merged, can be closed