Re: The HIG and Open a Copy

Am Dienstag, den 22.02.2005, 11:37 +1100 schrieb Martin Sevior:
> On Mon, 2005-02-21 at 23:16 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Ryan Pavlik wrote:
> >
> > <snip> please trim messages a little </snip>
> >
> > > I personally believe "Save as copy" is more useful than "Open a copy",
> > > since it is both more common and can be used to a similar effect. (Some
> > > other apps have only Save as copy or Save copy, not open).
> >
> > Even if it is only used by very few users I dont think any of us want to
> > turn away users from Abiword.
> >
> > > This might be a good compromise?
> >
> > I'd like to see things provided as plugins or some documenated alternative
> > method before they are removed.
> >
> > > If open a copy is removed, the ability to create
> > > templates should at least be "How-to"ed because it provided a quick and
> > > easy way to achieve "template-like" function without a template.
> >
> > If we could be confident that Templating was the main reason for having
> > "Open a Copy" I'd feel a lot less worried about removing it now that we do
> > have a good template system.
> >
> > (Most of these opinions are mine, some of them I'm just putting out there
> > for a well rounded discussion).
> >
> > Ryan your point about any change baffling existing users is a good one.
> >
> > sum1 wrote:
> > > menu functions achieves this. At this point, I /really/ would like to
> > > see the changes reverted until conclusive discussion has ended.
> >
> > I too would prefer to see things done that way as they have been done in
> > past Abiword development. Dom and Martin have been awfully quiet, I've
> > been expecting them to say how they would prefer development to be done.
> >
>
> I appreciate the real work that Rob is doing. I want to play with his
> changes before making definitive statements. I'd like to read what other
> people especially you Alan have to say. Things have a way being becoming
> set in stone whenever Dom or I make pronouncements.
>
> I have never used "Open Copy" and am frankly not sure what it does. When
> Dom implemented it there was no widespread disapproval.
>
> I think I like the recent files in the "file" menu.
>
> I agree with sum1 that being able to turn off autospell check from the
> tools menu was a useful feature. There is no doubt that the preference
> dialog is much slower and more cumbersome to use. Actually the
> preference dialog should be made non-modal on unix since all the
> preference changes are "instant apply". I don't how to do that for unix
> and not the other platform though.
>
> Regarding the method Rob used to float his ideas, it is certainly not
> how we've done things in the past but it has the effect of making
> everyone really study his changes.

I see and i will get back to that i think.
It's just harder to demo changes to menus with three or four PNGs than
sending in one image of how a dialog should look. Changes to menus
depend on each other, an i thing it's also important to "feel" the
proposed solution.

> I think that as long as Rob is prepared to do the work to revert the
> changes as we decide on them there is no great harm done.
>
> The major damage will be to Rob as his various ideas get rejected. I
> personally find it harder to see my work reverted rather than not
> implemented, but everyone is different.
>
> I don't think that in the future I'd like to see these sort of radical
> changes happen often. It would make development very confusing.

My plan is to do maybe one more change before 2.4 (with prior
discussion).

Best,
- Rob
Received on Tue Feb 22 09:29:08 2005