JOSM overuses OK/Cancel in its dialogs

[avarab@…]

See this comment.

A lot of dialogs in JOSM use the generic OK/Cancel message for their buttons as opposed to something that would be more descriptive.

This also has the added downside that the dialog buttons can't be translated in launchpad since they come from the JVM, not JOSM.

[stoecker]

A lot of dialogs have alread been changed. Closing as invalid. More descriptive reports or patches are wellcome.

[avarab@…]

Replying to stoecker:

A lot of dialogs have alread been changed. Closing as invalid. More descriptive reports or patches are wellcome.

Should I file bugs for these independently? That would be a whole lot of bugs:

avar@aoeu:~/src/josm$ grep -r OK_CANCEL_OPTION src 2>/dev/null | grep -v svn
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/markerlayer/MarkerLayer.java:                int answer = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(Main.parent, c, tr("Choose a color"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GeoImageLayer.java:            int answer = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(Main.parent, p, tr("Synchronize Time with GPS Unit"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/RawGpsLayer.java:                    JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/RawGpsLayer.java:                int answer = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(Main.parent, panel, tr("Select line drawing options"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/RawGpsLayer.java:                int answer = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(Main.parent, c, tr("Choose a color"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GpxLayer.java:                int answer = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(Main.parent, panel, tr("Select line drawing options"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GpxLayer.java:                int answer = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(Main.parent, c, tr("Choose a color"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GpxLayer.java:                    JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GpxLayer.java:                    JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION) == JOptionPane.CANCEL_OPTION)
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/layer/GpxLayer.java:                    JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION) == JOptionPane.CANCEL_OPTION)
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/dialogs/PropertiesDialog.java:        final JOptionPane optionPane = new JOptionPane(panel, JOptionPane.QUESTION_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION) {
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/dialogs/PropertiesDialog.java:        JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane(p, JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION){
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/preferences/PluginPreference.java:        int answer = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(gui, p, tr("Configure Plugin Sites"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/preferences/ColorPreference.java:                JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/gui/preferences/AdvancedPreference.java:        int answer = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(gui, p, tr("Enter a new key/value pair"), JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/PreferencesAction.java:        JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane(prefPanel, JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/DownloadAction.java:        JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane(downPanel, JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/GpxExportAction.java:                        JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION,
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/AddNodeAction.java:            JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane(p, JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION);
src/org/openstreetmap/josm/actions/RenameLayerAction.java:        final JOptionPane optionPane = new JOptionPane(panel, JOptionPane.QUESTION_MESSAGE, JOptionPane.OK_CANCEL_OPTION){

[stoecker]

The question is not whether these dialogs exist or not but if these are called often or not. When a dialog is called once a year why waste lots of efforts for it?

[avarab@…]

Replying to stoecker:

The question is not whether these dialogs exist or not but if these are called often or not. When a dialog is called once a year why waste lots of efforts for it?

I don't think this is a high priority task, but I filed it with the priority "major" because I generally just leave the "Priority" field at the default setting.

This is a relatively minor issue, but it exists so I filed a bug report for it. I try to file bugs for anything that's unoptimal so that the issue is being tracked and people interested in working on it can easily locate the issues in question.

The JOSM user experience would be improved if buttons had labels & icons that more accurately reflected their function. And as noted in the initial report some user of JOSM might be seeing messages in a language they don't even understand if they happen to have a localized JOSM but an unlocalized JVM.

I can stop filing bugs (and I seem to file a lot of them) for comparatively trivial issues and just file bugs for things like NullPointerExceptions. But IMO it's more valuable to keep them in the tracker. If they're minor or trivial they can just be marked with the priority "minor" or "trivial". That's what the priority classification is for.

[stoecker]

We already had exactly the same report and considered it closed after the major dialogs have been changed. The situation has not changed since this time, so having a long standing bug telling us that there are still some minor dialogs will not be useful in any way.

If you report lots of minor issues you also need to accept that some of them will be closed.