User interface issues

[todd rme]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:33 PM, Inge Wallin <inge at lysator.liu.se> wrote:
>
> Selection of shapes vs content
> -----------------------------------------
>
> 1. Sometimes it's obvious that the user wants to start changing the contents
> rather than the shape itself when he clicks.  The most glaring example is the
> a standard text shape on a page in Words.  When the user clicks in the text he
> expects the cursor to be placed in that position so that he can start writing
> text. If he clicks and drags he expects to start selecting a block of text.
> What is not wanted is that the text shape is selected or (worse) that it is
> moved around by the dragging operation. It can be argued that the user can
> always double click and thereby place the cursor, but Calligra is the only
> suite where this behaviour is happening.
>
> Personally I would say that this is *the* biggest interaction problem right
> now.

What if certain objects can have areas where the interaction is
different?  For example, if someone clicks on the edge of a text box,
I think the user would expect to be able to drag or resize the box.
If someone clicks on the middle, they expect to be able to edit the
contents of the text.  So I think allowing shapes to define areas
where their interaction is different than normal would be the most
general solution to this problem.

> Different types of tools aren't distinguishable
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some of our tools in the toolbox are primarily used to create new data, e.g.
> the Calligraphic pen tool. These tools can often also be used to edit the
> contents of data, such as the path of a line. Other tools are only used to
> change properties of already existing data, e.g. the stroke/fill docker or the
> shadow properties docker.
>
> This means that we have a discoverability problem. It's totally unobvious to
> the user that sees the stroke/fill docker that there are other dockers that
> can be used to insert interesting data into the document. The user shouldn't
> have to check all dockers to find out what is there.  It should be easier to
> find, such as the 'Insert' menu which is present in OOo or LibO. I'm not
> saying the 'Insert' menu is the route that we should go, but we should at
> least increase the discoverability for the users.
>
> At the same time, it's difficult for the user to find the dockers that can
> change a particular property of an object, since they are not automatically
> made present when the object is selected.
>
> A related problem is that our system to activate and deactivate dockers
> (Settings -> dockers-> the-docker-in-question) is very cumbersoms. We have no
> way of mvoing quickly between, say, graphics editing mode where graphics
> properties dockers are active and text editing mode where text editing dockers
> like the text statistics are active.

Could this be solved by letting objects or parts of objects either
show relevant dockers or, at least, somehow "suggest" dockers?  I
don't know how the latter would work specifically.

There might also be something about dockers having specific categories
they belong to, and all members of a category can be told to hide or
show themselves at once.

Another possibility might be sub-dockers, so basically dockers that
can hold other dockers.

> Default values
> -------------------
>
> We have no way to set default values for shapes. If I want to create a simple
> diagram with boxes and connectors, I may be interested in having all boxes the
> same color (or even gradient) and with the same font for the text, with the
> same line thickness, etc. If these values are not the same as the existing
> default values, we have no way of changing them so that when I insert a new
> rectangle it automatically gets the properties that I want.
>
> My suggestion here is that if the user sets, say, a stroke or fill without
> anything selected, the new values become the default values until they are
> changed the next time.

Could this be a discoverability issue?  How likely are users to do
this?  What if the properties are simply inhereted from the last
object you worked with?  This is how inkscape works.

-Todd