Subject: Re: AbiWord Interface Review
From: Karl Ove Hufthammer (huftis@bigfoot.com)
Date: Wed Aug 15 2001 - 18:15:32 CDT
to 09 aug 2001 09:53:46, "Jared Davis" <aiken@clan11.com>:
> For some time now I have been working on a review of AbiWord's
> interface.
I agree with *most* of your points. Here's some comments (mostly
on things I don't agree with, or things that need clearifying):
---Goal 1: The interface is responsive.
Yes! The first thing I did when opening the document, was selecting all the text and change the font to 'Myriad Web' font. That took quite a while ...
---
Appendix:
8. Add description of action in undo option in edit menu, i.e. ‘undo bold’ (1.1.3)
Note: This must be localizable.
---
16. Replace Date and Time dialog in insert menu with a sub-menu (1.1.5)
Perhaps the top menu-item could be the default date format for the current language (and/or locale). This should be separated from the other format by a horizontal line.
Also, it should be possible to insert the current date/time as a field. (But this wouldn't work well as a sub-menu, only as a dialogue.)
---
18. Remove Field and AutoText options from insert menu. (1.1.5)
*No*, fields have proven *very* useful. The current AutoText implementation on the other hand, is rather useless.
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20. Change format menu Columns option to use a sub-menu. (1.1.6)
I disagree. (No particular reason; I just prefer a dialogue for this (and the preview is very nice).)
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21. Remove format menu’s Tabs option. (1.1.6)
I disagree. And one general point to have in mind is that *all* features avilable from the toolbar *must* be available using the menus/dialogues. Not everybody *can* use a mouse.
---
23 Implement an embedded sub-menu for Format menu’s background option. (1.1.6)
I agree. And note that 'No fill' *is* very useful. There's a big difference to this and 'white' when the background colour isn't white (or positioning a (text/graphics) frame over something).
Oh, and frames (as in Word's implementation, or preferable as linked text boxes (where content can flow between several boxes)) are useful. You can do pretty nifty things with frames and styles in Word.
---
Lose the distinction between ‘style’ and ‘effects’. In other words, instead of using a list box for the bold and italics options, use check-boxes like we do for all of the other styles.
*No*. Most fonts include only italics, bold and bold italics, but there are fonts with many more styles/weights (e.g. 'black', 'semi-bold', 'small-caps').
---
25. (Possibly) automatically choose bidirectional text option from language choice. (1.1.6)
See HTML 4.01, CSS 2 and Unicode for details on this.
---
27. Possibly consider removing Formatting menu’s text attributes, alignment options. (1.1.6)
No. :)
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28. Remove the Document option from the Format menu. (1.1.6)
I strongly agree, but have one question: Does this bring up a different dialogue on non-Windows platforms?
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35. Rename Preferences to AbiWord Options in Tools menu. (1.1.7)
No, most Windows applications have changed this *to* 'Preferences'.
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47. Add ability to type font names and sizes into the combo boxes. (1.2.2)
<URL: http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1235 >
---
56. Change symbol dialog to be able to resize, have symbols grow. (1.3.2)
How about a complete workover? See <URL: http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1237 >.
-- Karl Ove Hufthammer
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