that's the goal.
> What I was thinking was having a toolbar, similar to Netscape's button bar
> (customisable between text, picture or both), as well as Emacs-style key
> bindings for each operation. (FYI, I'm a vi man, but I don't like the idea of
> sticking a first-time user in front of a word processor, and expect them to
> understand the idea of modes)
i think we are in "violent agreement". the current menu and toolbars
are just the beginning.... the bare essentials, if you will (and just
happen to show off (most of) the things that currently work :-)
the basic set we have now are (more or less) what i populated the
tables with when i designed the menu and toolbar code -- in a sense
test data. see:
abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_Menu_Layouts_{All,MainMenu}.h
abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_Toolbar_Layouts_All.h
abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_TB_Layouts_{FileEditOps,FormatOps}.h
since then, no one has taken time to look at the sets and flesh them
out. if you'd like to take a stab at it, that would be great!!!
the current app framework has a whole bunch of machinery under
the hood that is not currently being exploited. some of it i need
to finish the design for and some of it just needs a ui expression.
for example, the code is either ready or almost ready for us to be
able to:
do toolbar buttons with {images,text,both} and change them
on the fly;
change the main menu (think long vs short);
change languages (this one is not quite ready);
change keybindings (MSWord vs WP vs emacs vs vi);
> These days, just being technically better, cheaper, or politically better isn't
> enough to compete. (If that was the case, lyx would rules the word processing
> market)
>
> You need a user interface that doesn't require "understanding computers", it
> just needs you to know what you want to do, and how to use a keyboard (or
> typewriter) and mouse.
>
> I'm willing to help design such an interface, if there's anyone who's willing
> to work with me on it. (A UI designed by one person is a UI that works well
> for one person)
great! take a look at the files i listed above and let's start
a conversation off the main mailing list to see what we want do.
does anyone else want to join in this discussion ??
> > is there a precedent for a popup menu launched by a keyboard binding ??
>
> Possibly, so long as I don't need to buy a new keyboard to do so ;-)
last evening john brewer reminded me of the "menu shortcut" key on
(aka shift-f10) on the newer keyboards, so i'm in the process of adding
a binding for that.
jeff