Subject: Re: The New Styles
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 14 2001 - 03:27:10 CST
On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 08:47:04AM +0000, James Montgomerie wrote:
> 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).
I just tried the new styles, and I have to say that I agree with
Jamie. They are radically different than what I expect (and I've used
AbiWord exclusivly for about 18 months). I think that this runs
counter to user expectations. And as we all know, there's no such
thing as an intuitive interface, just one the user already knows. So
I'm against the line spacing changes.
>
> > > 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").
Well, I don't, but that's because I write double spaced (that's what
profs like), and don't have an extra space between my paragraphs. So
the style adds an extra space that I don't want between my
paragraphs.
>
> 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.
This is a potentially serious problem. I agree with Jamie that the
line spacing changes are definitely a problem. However, in light of
this, I'm sort of ambivalent about the formatting changes. They
certainly look better, and if we had no installed base, I wouldn't
hesitate to support them. However, we do have plenty of people with
"legacy" AbiWord documents, and we have to be careful about what we do
that changes the behavior of those documents. So, what do people
think?
sam th --- sam@uchicago.edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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