Subject: Re: The New Styles
From: James Montgomerie (jamie@montgomerie.net)
Date: Wed Mar 14 2001 - 02:47:04 CST
On 2001.03.14 07:40:39 +0000 Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> > The hasty decision to switch to the new styles is perplexing me. All
> my
> > documents now have double-width spaces between all the paragraph,
> > because the 'Normal' style has changed to have a blank line-space after
> > each explicitly typed 'enter'. Whilst this might be the more
> > typographically 'correct' option, it is not what I expect from a word
> > processor - 'enter' starts a new /line/ not a new /paragraph/.
> I think quite soon the Normal style will be user-editable, so that
> this will not be an issue, since everyone will be able to make
> whatever they want.
I still think the default should conform to their expectations. Saying to
a novice user, 'you can edit that to make it like what you expect' is just
going to put them off. It would be like using the emacs keybindings by
default (perhaps that's too strong, but you get the idea - it might be
better once you're used to it, but it's not what's expected).
> > Everyone presses enter twice to start a new paragraph.
> I would dispute that -:).
Hrm, I did some (not statistically valid) asking around in Uni, and
everyone there does.
Perhaps we should ask on the user list (i.e. something like "When typing in
a word processor, how many times do you press enter to start a new
paragraph").
What is worrying me most, however, is not really the 'typing action' - that
should be possible to get used to [I'd still argue that users shouldn't
have to get used to it - 'enforcing' typographical 'correctness' is a
rather arrogant decision to make, in my opinion]. I'm most concerned that
people's /already written/ documents will be /very different/ when they're
loaded into the next version of AbiWord.
To put it in AbiSource terms, upon the next release AbiWord will no longer
do what the Church Secretary expects. If no-one else agrees that this is a
problem, I'll shut up, however.
Jamie.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Mar 14 2001 - 02:48:35 CST