Subject: some nonsense constraints unavoidable (was Re: Commit: More section break goodness.)
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Fri Aug 10 2001 - 16:41:15 CDT
At 08:58 PM 8/10/01 +0200, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
>BTW why do we have such a situation ?
I admit that it's tempting to prevent "nonsense constraints" from occurring,
so that we don't have to cope with them.
Indeed, we can and should try to constrain the various UIs for tab/margin
settings to enforce some constraints, such as:
- ruler: can't drag a tab outside the page (we block this)
- ruler: can't drag margins outside the page (we block this)
- ruler: can't drag column gap too narrow (we block this)
- and something similar for corresponding dialogs (???)
Other constraints may be worth enforcing:
- ruler: can't drag margins too close together (??)
- ruler: can't drag column gap too wide (??)
- and something similar for corresponding dialogs (???)
Still others are probably just a bad idea:
- ruler: can't drag a tab outside the margins (OK by me)
- ruler: can't drag margins inside existing tabs (so what?)
- etc.
However, I'm unconvinced that this will suffice. While our UI should resist
such situations where feasible, we can't (and shouldn't) prevent it entirely.
Reasonable examples:
1. We import a document created by some other product which doesn't enforce
constraints the way we do. In this case, it's OK to ignore those
constraints, while still preserving them for round-trip fidelity.
2. You've set tabstops on a document which worked for landscape. Then you
switch the document to portrait, invalidating some of them. Then you switch
back to landscape. Now they should work again.
(I'm sure people can come up with more screw cases if they want to.)
bottom line
-----------
Enforcing some constraints is a good thing for usability, because it reduces
the chances that people will create unusable documents. (The fact that it
also makes the layout logic simpler is an important secondary benefit.)
However, we can't prevent "nonsense constraints" entirely, so we *do* need
good strategies for dealing with them when they do occur (as outlined in the
other subthread).
Paul
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