Subject: Re: UI Hit Squad
From: Thomas Fletcher (thomasf@qnx.com)
Date: Wed Nov 22 2000 - 07:40:53 CST
On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Randy Kramer wrote:
> 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).)
Outlines, headings and lists are all different (but at the same time
mildly similar). Headings correspond to a font/size/indent value which is
applied to text, in a similar manner to HTML headings <H1>,<H2>, ...
The idea is to set a policy about heading levels instead of forcing
the user to go and change their particular text attributes all the
time. It is faster and less error prone and allows you to guarantee
a look and feel to a document. Lists are just that, they are ordered
(although in the case of bullets, the ordering is non-visible) entries,
in HTML these correspond to the <LI> type of entries. In a weird
convoluted way, you could think of headings as a special case of
lists ... but generally they are seperate. Outlines are what happens
when you take a nested set of entries (a heading and all of its sub
headings, a list and all of its sublists) and are able to collapse them.
In theory you could do this with lists, or anything which has the concept
of nesting.
We have spent some time on the list discussing having the promote/demote
options in the toolbar and decided that most people can live without
them for now. At some point when we have a totally customizable toolbar(s)
(I wouldn't be surprised to see it show up before release) then we
could add that as an option. For lists, Word allows you to easily
Tab/Delete to promote/demote list values.
> 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?
It could be, but right now the headings are not tied to the list code
in any way shape or form (At least last I looked ... Martin?). This
doesn't have to be so, but headings were available long before our
list implementation was.
I actually think that the only real difficult part with collapsable
outlines is deciding where to stop/start the outline. It also seems
to be kind of odd to use it in a WP when you are really interested in
the layout of the document. Now in a code editor I think it is very
handy!
Thomas
> 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
> > >
>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas (toe-mah) Fletcher QNX Software Systems
thomasf@qnx.com Neutrino Development Group
(613)-591-0931 http://www.qnx.com/~thomasf
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Nov 22 2000 - 07:39:18 CST