Subject: RE: List Dialog -- Speak now
From: WJCarpenter (bill-abisource@carpenter.ORG)
Date: Wed Aug 16 2000 - 10:54:26 CDT
tf> Martin and I have been quietly been working on a new list dialog
tf> which mimmicks (to an extent) the Word dialog all in one dialog.
OK, this message isn't going to be about the list dialogs, which look
okie-dokie to me. It's about list bullet items in general. I think
Martin and others involved are converging nicely on implementing
bullet lists Just-Like-Everyone-Else, which is an extremely valuable
thing to have and probably an essential thing if you want to call
yourself a word processor.
I think that what we are generally calling bullets (whether they are
bullet symbols, ascending alphas, ascending numbers, roman numerals,
whatever) could actually be more general. What I propose would
probably be baffling to the Church Secretary, but would be a pretty
cool feature for a variety of actual uses by sophisticated users.
A list may be numbered or unnumbered. If it is numbered, it has (a) a
starting numeric value, and (b) an increment for each list item. The
increment can be positive or negative. (I was thinking integers, but
I guess there's no reason to impose that limitation.)
The thing which represents what we might call the bullet is (a) any
arbitrary piece of formatted text, which might include font and size
changes or any of the other attributes that we let users manipulate,
and (b) zero or more placeholders for a smidgeon of text composed from
the current numeric value for the list item.
It's probably obvious to a child of 5 where I got these ideas. My
thoughts are an amalgam of printf(), texinfo, and some kind of warped
expression processor :-).
-- bill@carpenter.ORG (WJCarpenter) PGP 0x91865119 38 95 1B 69 C9 C6 3D 25 73 46 32 04 69 D6 ED F3
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Aug 16 2000 - 13:37:22 CDT