I’ve had a chance to use Haruna recently now that it’s default in the new Kubuntu; it’s quite a nice application.
I noticed the following in the settings though, which led me :
This seems like a confusing double negative, which the KDE HIG section for checkboxes already advises against. Then I clicked the checkbox and…
It’s not actually a double negative. The Checkbox label responds to the current state, i.e. whether it is checked or not. This is quite perplexing to me, and in my mind is not how checkboxes should behave. The label of this kind of control should not respond to user action, or it might e.g. lead users to believe in the first image that Hardware decoding is enabled (after working out the double negative).
After thinking about it for a bit, it does feel appropriate for a sliding switch though. At least if it uses text after the switch, as in Hardware decoding (O-) Disabled, then after sliding the switch Hardware decoding (-O) Enabled. It would certainly be confusing to have the labeling be the same way as the usual checkmark version, Hardware decoding (o-) Enabled. (Although it might often be better to just leave out the post-switch label, as the switch already seems to carry this information).
Looking at the HIG, I couldn’t find anything about this particular matter though. Sliding switches do not seem to be covered at all yet, and whether the checked state can affect the checkbox label is not addressed.
So my questions are
(1) Did I miss this somewhere?
(2) If not, should the HIG specify something about changing control labels based on their state (or user action more generally)?
(3) If so, what should that be, and for which controls? Are there circumstances where a checkbox (or radio button etc.) might want to change its label based on its state? Should it be explicitly endorsed for sliding switches (once they are covered by the HIG)?
Also, this is my first post, so hello KDE Discuss. I wasn’t quite sure in which section to post this, so feel free to move this. However, this post is not really about this specific issue in Haruna, or I would just file a bug. It’s more generally about what the HIG should say about (some) controls.