From: Alan Horkan (horkana@tcd.ie)
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 10:09:55 EDT
On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 04:59:43 -0400
> From: Hubert Figuiere <hub@nyorp.abisource.com>
> To: abiword-dev@nyorp.abisource.com
> Subject: Fwd: Re: AbiWord Font Usability question
> Microsoft seems to have recognized these use cases, and tries to fufill
> (1) by providing an MRU list at the top of the font pulldown, and (2) by
MRU Fonts!
Told you so, was it last year i filed that feature request.
(having a very immature moment!!!)
> Instead I propose to only include 5-8 MRU items in the font pulldown
> menu (organized alphabetically, to organize by recency of use will
> probably only serve to confuse), then a seperator then "Other Fonts..."
probably?
anything to back this up?
Most recently used makes sense to be ordered by most recently used.
how about a comparison to what Word does? If Word orders MRU by MRU
which i think it does then taking a differnt approach really requires
some backup.
> which will open up a font selection dialogue. The fonts in the pulldown
> menu should be drawn in their own faces for consistency and to provide
> Initially the MRU menu would be populated by a few exemplar fonts from
> common classes. So for English (and probably most european languages?)
clever. good defaults.
> As a further optimization allowed by resticting the pulldown menu to a
> fixed length, AbiWord could move to using an option menu control rather
> than a combo box. Fitt's law says that time to acquire a target with the
> mouse is a function of distance from the cursor and size of the target.
> The pulldown button for combo boxes is a very small target indeed.
> Option menus provide a much larger target. Combo boxes have a scrolling
> ability however, that, I conjecture, is the main reason they have
> traditionally been used for font menus. This need is eliminated with a
> fixed length menu.
this sounds like back up for what i was saying about big targets, but Seth
is starting to confuse me.
> The only other advantage of a combo box is that you can directly type
> the name of a font in rather than going through the list. I have rarely
> seen this used, and its very hard to do without typeahead (which abiword
what i said.
> gains from everyone having a bigger target to click on far outweigh the
> cost of a few people not being able to type directly anymore. Also, the
bigger target better i say.
> this is not too uncommon for graphic layout folk....however I don't know
> how relevant that activity is to a word processor).
i dont think people many are yet using Abiword for Desktop Publishing.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
(just in a silly immature mood, not drunk so dont even ask)
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