Subject: New List Dialog Ideas (LONG!)
From: Thomas Fletcher (thomasf@qnx.com)
Date: Fri Aug 04 2000 - 15:04:31 CDT
Martin (and to the list out of interest and discussion),
Just wanted to congratulate you on the work you have
been doing on the lists thus far. The work is excellent
so far. I have encountered some bugs, but all in all
things look good.
I'm not sure if you have had a chance to compare against
the word behaviour (if you have, then just put up with
me for the next few lines), but there is something not
quite right with a couple of things.
Comment #1
----------
You should be able to turn a list item on/off by clicking
on the appropriate icon on the toolbar. For example if I
type the line:
This is very cool |
Then press the numbered list button I get (| is my cursor).
1. This is very cool |
Now if I press the numbered list button again I get
[1. ] |This is very cool
Where [] indicates a selection. Unfortunately I can't
delete this area like it would seem. In any case you
shouldn't have to. Pressing the list icon should create
a list for the current line/block and Un-pressing the
list icon should un-do the list for the current line/block
(effectively joining it with the previous line).
For example if I have created:
1. A line
2. Another line
3. Yet another line
Put my cursor on line 2 and "un-press" the list icon then
in Word I get:
1. A line
Another line
2. Yet another line
The same thing with highlighting. If I highlight the
following:
A line
Another line
Yet another line
And press the list icon then in Word I get:
1. A line
2. Another line
3. Yet another line
These are both very desirable behaviours since it means that
you can quickly and efficiently create lists and manipulate
them around (joining/createing grouped list paragraphs and
the like). This is especially useful when you get the lists
bound to a key combination so that bulleting becomes just
like centering.
Comment #2
----------
Word doesn't let you have an empty list item, which means
that you can quickly terminate a list at any time by hitting
return twice. For example if I have:
1. A line
2. Another line |
Then hit return once I get
1. A line
2. Another line
3. |
Then hitting return again, Word detects that I've done a
double return and rips out the 3rd list item and does this:
1. A line
2. Another line
|
Which is most likely what we would want since generally you
start a new paragraph/add a line of whitespace after a list.
Alternately if I was at the
1. A line
2. Another line
3. |
And hit backspace ONCE then line 3. dissappears and we get
1. A line
2. Another line
|
Currently we have to backspace TWICE to get this behaviour,
and then when we do the list button doesn't toggle off to
indicate that we are no longer in list selection mode, so
you can't re-toggle it to give you a 3.
Comment #3
----------
Word has three different modes/categories for their lists.
Bullets and Numbered lists are a single depth list very
much like what we have now. Their third category is
Outline Numbered which is like:
1.
a.
i.
Moving from one list state to the next is very simple and
is done through what I have previously called promote/demote,
but is just increasing/decreasing the indent level. In
Word if you start off with
1. A line
2. |
Then at this point, before typing anything hit TAB then
you promote the indent level so that now you get:
1. A line
a. |
Hitting TAB again gets you the next level:
1. A line
i. |
If you DELETE/BACKSPACE before typing in any characters
then you will demote the indent level, so one backspace
from here gets:
1. A line
a. |
If you type and work at this level then the next return
will maintain you indent level:
1. A line
a. Another line
b. |
If you type in any character and then double backspace
then you with loose the list label but not the indent
level.
1. A line
a. Another line
| (after typing something and backspacing over list)
NOTE: This doesn't un-indent you back to 2.
I think that we should follow all of these same behaviours
when the time comes for us to support outline numbered lists.
Comment #4
----------
I really want to re-work our list dialog to be simple and
straightforward. I think that the Word dialog does very
well in this regard. They have three tabs:
[Bullets][Numbered][Outline Numbered]
On each tab you get to choose one of six small previews
or select a customize button to roll your own. I don't
think that we should worry too much about the roll our
own just yet (and where to store that information?) ...
but if we aren't going to follow Word's dialog then I
would suggest the following dialog design:
------------------------------------------------------|
|
Style: [Drop Down List] /--------------------\ |
| | |
| | |
Type: [Drop Down Types] | PREVIEW | |
| | |
| | |
[Customize Button] | | |
\--------------------/ |
|
() Restart Numbering () Continue Numbering |
|
|
[Apply/OK] [Close] |
------------------------------------------------------|
Here the Style indicates one of three types of lists,
Bulleted Lists, Numbered Lists or Outline Numbered lists
the same as in Word.
The Types is a friendly name for the indentation types,
or a user provided name in the case of user configurations.
For example:
Bulleted: Numbered Lists
-Dots -Arabic Dot (1., 2. )
-Stars -Roman Dot (i., ii. )
-Dashes -Lower Paren (a), b) )
-Dingbats -Upper Dot (A., B., )
Outline Numbered
-Arabic Roman (1., i. ..)
etc.
Of course looking at this it almost seems like really we
would want to have a type (character, number etc) then
a delimiter (dot, dash, parentheses) as well as an indent
level when we allow the user to customize it.
In any case I know that this has been a rather long e-mail.
Took quite some time to compose, but I think that we have
had some really great work done on the list code and I'm
looking forward to seeing this feature go rock solid like
the other great features which have been added as of late.
Thomas
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas (toe-mah) Fletcher QNX Software Systems
thomasf@qnx.com Neutrino Development Group
(613)-591-0931 http://www.qnx.com/~thomasf
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