Subject: RE: lists stuff
From: Thomas Fletcher (thomasf@qnx.com)
Date: Mon Nov 27 2000 - 19:12:36 CST
On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Martin Sevior wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Nov 2000, Joaquin Cuenca Abela wrote:
> > > The word dialog does not allow all the cool features we allow.
> >
> > Martin, I've double checked the word list's dialog, and I don't see what are
> > the features that we allow and that word doesn't allow. What are these
> > features?
> >
>
> OK maybe I do MS an injustice. Here is what we can do that I think MS
> cannot.
Actually our list dialog is totally modelled after the
MS-Word dialog in its functionality. About three months
ago (I think ... might only be two .. check the archives)
I posted a rather lengthly Us vs Them comparison of our
list implementation. Functionally we are quite close
to their behaviour in the actual document. This discussion
then led to the discussion about the best way to do
the list dialog which led to the current visual representation
for the list dialog. The main difference between our
representation and the MS-Word implementation is 1) Word
uses an extra dialog to do the configuring of the list
2) Word has these fixed five-seven little previews of
what your list looks like. Essentially they start off
with 5/7 default Numbered lists and 5/7 default Bullet
lists. Then the user can either pick one of these stock
list items and modify it. The modifications are "sticky"
meaning that they stay persistent through out the lifetime
of the document. This persistence is something that we
can look at implementing later with our simpler dialog
interface. Yes it is in fact _simpler_ the problem is
just that we haven't ironed out the details of how
to make the user experience pleasant and so there are some
odd surprises (especially when it comes to the modality
of the document as we have already discussed). I'm 110%
sure taht our end result, when we due its major overhaul,
will be intuitive, pleasing and easy to use.
Of course somments are always welcome.
Thomas
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Nov 27 2000 - 19:24:28 CST