| [platform-ui-dev] Recent Changes to Workspace Launcher Dialog |
Dear platform-ui, I read the preliminary M3 release notes and want to share some thoughts. I dislike the recent text changes made to the launcher dialog. IMHO they add more, new confusion than they improve the current situation (as the milestones NN section suggests).   Reasons why: "Select a directory“ is by far less helpful than "Select a workspace“. Workspace is a term that needs to be learned but is has a well-defined meaning. „Directory“ is not. It’s like using "Open Dialog“ instead of „Open Preferences“ or „Open About“. I’d stick with Workspace in the title instead of directory. The Term „your data“ is much more vague than the previous explanation. I understand that, from a pure technical perspective, the workspace folder doesn’t have to store your data. But I does so by default, and thus, it’s okay to say so. In addition it actually stores the mapping which projects exist, are opened, closed etc. So, in a more abstract sense it’s still true. The change using „directory“ instead of „folder“ should be done carefully. Those terms are used widely in the APIs, documentation etc. While some may argue both can be used interchangeably I’d prefer to be consistent. Personally, I’ve a preference for folders since the resources plugins uses IFolders and IFiles and existing wizards use the term folders as well ( e.g. „Create New Folder Wizard“, New Source Folder Wizard“, „C++ Folder Properties“ etc.) For completeness: The change to add 5 more workspaces to the short list, well, for those this issue matters - they will be happy. Those that usually don’t have more than 5 workspaces per Eclipse install - they won’t notice. Thus, this change likely improves the dialog. Changing the dialog title from "Workspace Launcher" to "Eclipse Launcher" looks fine to me - although I did not feel uncomfortable with it before. |