Subject: Re: list dialog (was Re: Outstanding patches)
From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela (cuenca@pacaterie.u-psud.fr)
Date: Mon Aug 27 2001 - 17:18:14 CDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Rohr" <paul@abisource.com>
To: "Martin Sevior" <msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au>
Cc: "Tim LaDuca" <tjl@141.com>; "AbiWord-dev" <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 6:17 AM
Subject: Re: list dialog (was Re: Outstanding patches)
> At 12:17 PM 8/27/01 +1000, Martin Sevior wrote:
> >Well Joaquin's the best person to answer about he is doing.
>
> Yep. That's what I'm trying to get him to do. :-)
yes, I'm here I'm here... sorry for the delay :-)
> >I've since
> >changed my mind about the Lists dialog. I think our Modeless Lists dialog
> >is a cool way to manipulate lists. I just want to make a few more tweaks.
> >Specifially, replace the "%L" in the List delimeter entry with actual
List
> >label and leave the entry on either side for text before and after the
> >label. But that is all.
>
> I think what you're saying here is that you really like the modeless
> interaction for customizing and tweaking existing lists, right? Is your
> objection just a modal vs. modeless thing, or is it something else?
>
> >My impression was that Joaquin was working on a Modal Lists dialog to
> >replace the current bullets and numbering dialog.
yes, but it should fire the old lists dialog when the user clicks in
"customize".
Anyway, Martin, to me the most important part is the gui of the dialog, and
if it is a modal one or a non modal one is less important to me.
<brief discussion>
My thoughts about the modality of the dialogs are that if a dialog changes
"visibly" when the insertion point changes, then (to me) it should be modal.
Any other dialogs should be non modal.
For instance, a search/replace dialog don't change its contents when the
user moves the ip, so following this rule it should be non modal.
A dialog to change the current font, change its contents when the user moves
the ip (if the user switch from a text in "Times" to a text in "Arial", the
dialog should change the font currently selected from "Times" to "Arial").
So following this rule it should be modal. (imho a non modal dialog here
only helps to confuse the user.)
</brief discussion>
That said, I can live with a non modal list's dialog. What I will not like
is a "simple" list dialog "modal" and a "powerful" one "non modal". That
will do no good for our users. It will only show that there are 2 developers
that disagree on how the modality of the list dialog should be.
So I think that the only question remaining is: do you think (as me) that a
set of clickable (non modal, if you like them this way) previews are easier
to use, and that fits better a "first" list dialog?
Cheers,
-- Joaquin Cuenca Abela e98cuenc@yahoo.com
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