Subject: Re: Commit: Various Lists UI improvements.
From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Thu Feb 01 2001 - 10:05:56 CST
<resent to the list, with a ps>
Martin,
You're very welcome!
I probably have not done full justice to outlining, but I'm not sure
what else to tell you right now.
One thing I will mention is that, with the outline collapsed you can
choose to copy a heading or a heading plus it's subheadings and sub
text. I forget the exact key strokes, but you do something like press
<ctrl> when you make the selection in one case, and not in the other.
PS: You can also choose to expand or collapse portions of the outline
-- expand or collapse a particular heading(s) or subheading(s).
Randy Kramer
Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Randy Kramer wrote:
>
> > I'm not exactly sure why they distinguish an outline from a list, I'm
> > not even absolutely sure they do (it's been about a year since I used
> > Word on a daily basis). I suspect that an outline has a few more
> > capabilities than a list. An outline can "comprise" an entire document,
> > i.e., all the text in a document can be within an outline. The numbered
> > headings of the outline can be used to automatically generate a table of
> > contents. The text under an outline heading (and the subheadings below
> > any level of the outline) can be collapsed so that you view only the
> > outline (and any level of headings -- just the first level, the first
> > and second level), etc. This is a big help for organizing a document,
> > navigating within the document, and moving material from one section to
> > another.
>
> OK I get this. It is not implemented in Abi.
> >
> > IIRC, I've even created multiple chapter "books" using the outline
> > approach with their master documemt approach. I'm hoping all of those
> > capabilities will eventually be supported by AbiWord.
> >
>
> We can do this.
>
> > Aside:
> > 1. Collapsing an outline starts with making text or headings below a
> > given level invisible. Expanding it makes them visible again. The
> > ability to copy a heading with it's associated text and subheadings or
> > without it requires that the document recognize (or be able to
> > recognize) which text and sub-headings should be associated with a
> > higher level heading.
>
> You don't need to do this to copy an Abi list structure. Just select the
> region/copy or cut it and paste it elsewhere. You can even paste into an
> pre-existing list structure with a reasonable chance of getting what you
> want.
>
> >
> > 2. The master document approach is something like an include file,
> > although, IIRC, (in Word 97) they have two mechanisms, one is an include
> > file, the other is the master / sub document which provides a little
> > more functionality (but I don't really remember what additional
> > functionality).
> >
> > Hope this helps a little
> > Randy Kramer
> >
>
> Hmm maybe I should set up a mode that doesn't stop a list with 2
> consecutive new-lines. Then you could design your own outline structure
> and fill it in as you go. This would be trivial. The list structure or
> outline could be copied and pasted where ever you like.
>
> Thanks for the feedback Randy.
>
> Martin
>
> >
> >
> > Martin Sevior wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Thomas Fletcher wrote:
> > >
> > > > Martin,
> > > >
> > > > This is exactly what I had in mind a way back when we took a look
> > > > at the MSWord implementation of lists and how it differed. Nice to
> > > > see this all coming together and getting cleaned up/worked out again.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yes it took a while to get all the infrastructure right but now it is
> > > easy to tweak these UI things.
> > >
> > > I also took me a while to realize that our lists are what MS calls an
> > > "Outline". I dodn't know why they distinguish between Outlines and Lists.
> > > I think it just serves to confuse.
> > >
> > > It's fun to set up a complicated multi-level list structure, make some
> > > chanes at the start and watch everything change to match it. Even more fun
> > > to press "undo" and watch it change back. Ahh the amount of effor required
> > > to get that to Just Work..
> > >
> > > I'm also happy that we can cand/copy/paste complicated List structures
> > > through the document. All-in-all our vision for Lists in Abi is pretty
> > > much in place, once we get the dialog going.
> > >
> > > > With regards to the dialog. Your suggestions sound good, will they
> > > > be build on the basis of what we were working on before Christmas? I
> > > > still think that a modal version might be easier for the users ... but
> > > > if you implement the non-modal version we were discussing then that
> > > > would be fine as well.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yes I plan to implement all the things we talked about before Christmas.
> > >
> > > I really want to do a re-write of XP Lists dialog code. It will break
> > > other builds but hopefully not too much. Can other platform maintainers
> > > fix things afterwards?
> > >
> > > I'll work from Mike's "new" (in December) dialog code which puts more
> > > functionality into xp.
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > >
> > > Martin
> >
> >
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