Subject: Re: UI Hit Squad
From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Wed Nov 22 2000 - 07:04:28 CST
Martin,
(I use Office (Word) 97.)
I'm more familiar with outlines than lists. I know that Word 97 has
increase / decrease buttons on the outline tool bar which serve to raise
or lower the level of a heading. In Word, toolbars can be created and
customized, so a user can leave these increase / decrease buttons on a
toolbar or take them off. I'm sure AbiWord does not have that feature
yet, but I'm hoping that there is nothing being built to preclude that
possibility in the future.
Even though I use outlining a lot, I generally don't use the increase /
decrease buttons on the toolbar, I use the keyboard shortcuts. On my
customized toolbar, I don't include those buttons, there are buttons
(and controls -- like the font size combo box) that are more useful to
me.
Digression: I am confused about how lists relate to outlines. I think
that lists and outlines are almost the same -- outlines use heading
"paragraphs" with formatable styles designated Heading 1 thru Heading 9.
Ordinary text can be interspersed between outline headings and is
associated with the outline heading above it.
Among other things, you can go to the Format | Bullets and Numbering
menu and set it so that numbers are automatically applied to those
headings based on their position in the outline and the heading level.
(That may not be very clear -- level 1 headings might be numbered 1, 2,
3, the first level 2 heading under the second level 1 heading might be
numbered 2.1, and so on.)
If lists use the same Heading 1 thru Heading 9 styles, you've got a lot
of the outlining feature already built, and you can provide a
collapsible outline by giving the user options to make some headings
(and associated text) temporarily invisible. (For example, if all
headings (and text) at heading level 2 or above (higher numbered
headings) are made invisible, the outline is "collapsed" to level 1 (the
top level).)
I guess a list does not have to use the styles "Heading 1" thru "Heading
9" but can use other styles with "outline levels" (1 thru 9) associated
with them.
In your opinion, is your implementation of lists a step on the road to
implementing collapsible outlining?
Randy Kramer
Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> One thing that MS Word has that would be easy to add for Abi are buttons
> to increase and decrease the indentation level of lists. I could do this
> before 0.7.12 if people want it but it will take up another two spots in
> our valuable toolbar real-estate. Are there opinions on whether we want
> these buttons?
>
> Cheers
>
> Martin
>
> PS. Dom, can you describe how you get cursor dirt with Lists? I can
> probabally fix it quickly.
>
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
>
> > Please read this. Ken and I spent some good amount of time discussing some
> > UI problems/enhancements that we'd like to see in AbiWord. Please comment on
> > this, suggest more stuff, etc... Feel free to drop by on IRC
> > (irc.gnome.org#abiword) I'm going to start fixing a few of the Gnome-only
> > items now. Perhaps we need a UI hit-squad team? Anyway, here are some intial
> > suggestions.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Dom
> > _____________________________________________________________________________________
> > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
> >
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