Style guide decision needed (was: [Kopete-devel] Bug#40938: behaviour change request)

[Martijn Klingens]

On Sunday 28 April 2002 16:45, Antonio Larrosa Jiménez wrote:
> > 1. Make it a proper KAction, so you have the 'customize key bindings'
> > option 2. Tip of the day
> >
> > Both are fairly common practice in many other KDE apps as well,
>
> We're not talking about other applications, but about kopete.

But if most of KDE uses those, why can't Kopete be made to use them?

> Yes, alt-f4 is nicely written at the right of the menu option "close" which
> I have to click to close my window. Where will Ctrl-Enter be written ?

Tooltip? Configure Key Bindings? What's This? Tip of the day?

> > My mom uses the mouse for stuff like this, not the keyboard.
>
> Many people will do the same. But come on, how many windows does she/you
> close in a day ? Will you compare that to the key binding to submit some
> text in a IM application ? (where you write at least 3 or 4 lines each
> minute).

I was talking about the send action in an instant messaging client, actually. 
Ok, she doesn't use IM, but I'm damn pretty sure she would use the mouse to 
send if she did.

> > Which assumes you always (or at least mostly) send a single line of
> > data, which is hardly the case for me.
>
> And? I'm not saying that multilineedit should be forbidden.

No, it means that the most common action (newline) should get the most common 
keybinding (enter).

> > And why do you think even MS' own client (which is the most dumbed down
> > of MSN, Trillian, ICQ, Yahoo, Kopete, ... ) supports ONLY a multiline
> > edit?
>
> Because their users don't care about multilineedits (which, believe it or
> not, is a "power user" feature that the average user won't use) and
> because they support both multilineedit _and_ Enter sends text. But still
> they provide a multilineedit for you to use multi line messages.

Yes, and you were talking about making this *configurable* and off by 
default??? Even in MS' client this is *not* configurable and *on*, and I said 
that's the most dumbed down IM client of all. I don't think we should aim 
below even their level...

> > Because everyone uses that feature. Difference is that MS uses
> > shift-enter for newline, just like in MS Word, where shift-enter is a
> > line break, as opposed to a paragraph break. That leaves enter available
> > for send.
>
> My proposal involved both, being consistant _and_ easy to use by using an
> option that explicitly says the kind of widget kopete would use.

That's not easy, because as you know newbies and config options don't match. 
Newbies and multiline messages do.

> Ok, if you prefer consistency with LICQ over easy of use then do what you
> want.

I never used LICQ, I have no idea what keybindings it has. I used MS' client, 
I use KMail, I am thinking of something that is (or can be) consistent with 
KHTML (which enter-to-submit) cannot ever be used for.

> But MS (and IRC) choose easy of use (Enter submits) and that's for a
> reason (ok, IRC doesn't support multiple line messages anyway, but, come
> on, have you ever really needed them in IRC?

Well, it would be damn handy if I could write longer messages in one burst, 
with proper paragraph endings and all, so people can read the message as 
whole with no people replying halfway already or people also on the channel 
chatting inbetween my lines... But oh well, that's not possible.

> And most important, do you think more than 5% of our users will ever need
> it? )

If it were available, yes. But it is not.

Martijn