Of a user interface the base states what it shows, not how it looks
Of a user interface, the base specification states what a user can rely on in any instance: what is shown, what it means, in what order, in which states, and what the user can do. How it looks and is built — placement, size, colour, icon, the kind of control, where a state is kept — is described in the technical appendix.
The same rules can then be given another look with an appendix of its own; and a rule that names its look goes stale when the look changes, although what the user can rely on has not.
The links it makes
The decisions taken on it
- Problem
Nothing said whether the look of a user interface belongs in a rule of the base specification, and rules named column widths, where the browser keeps them and the icons of a menu.
- Ruling
The owner: the base specification holds what a user can rely on in any instance — what is shown, what it means, its order, its states, what can be done; the technical appendix holds how it looks and is built — placement, sizes, colours, icons, the kind of control, where a state is kept. A menu's order and nesting stay in the base, its icons go to the appendix.
- Problem
The rule carried an exception for a menu generated from the specification, which not every project has, and named the person using an interface by one project's term.
- Ruling
The owner: a project needing such an exception writes it into its own guidelines, refining this rule (§s-bsya3febm6u64ab); the rule speaks of a user.