Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Just found about Horn and his structured writing:
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/tocStructrdWriting.html

http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/tocStructrdWriting.htmlThe
first pdf covers the idea quite well.
It seems that he advocated labels (tags) for every chunk of text (he
dislikes paragraphs as units of content).
I've wanted this chunk tagging too, but no software does this well that I
have found.
He seems to have a company that sells software but it looks enterprisey and
windows only. I don't feel like trying it...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.comwrote:

 On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
   On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
   What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
   for
   people here?
  
   Yes.
  
   Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
   reduce mental load?
  
   Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
   from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
   that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
   would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
  
   In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
   request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
   wrong...
  
   Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
   settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
  The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
  collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
  etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
  very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All
  and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
  edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
  rh

 Vim does this with its Folding feature. Because it uses the Vim engine,
 VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting,
 although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and
 can
 lose data.

 SteveT

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Just found about Horn and his structured writing:
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/tocStructrdWriting.html

http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/tocStructrdWriting.htmlThe
first pdf covers the idea quite well.
It seems that he advocated labels (tags) for every chunk of text (he
dislikes paragraphs as units of content).
I've wanted this chunk tagging too, but no software does this well that I
have found.
He seems to have a company that sells software but it looks enterprisey and
windows only. I don't feel like trying it...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.comwrote:

 On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
   On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
   What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
   for
   people here?
  
   Yes.
  
   Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
   reduce mental load?
  
   Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
   from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
   that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
   would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
  
   In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
   request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
   wrong...
  
   Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
   settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
  The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
  collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
  etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
  very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All
  and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
  edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
  rh

 Vim does this with its Folding feature. Because it uses the Vim engine,
 VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting,
 although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and
 can
 lose data.

 SteveT

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Just found about Horn and his structured writing:
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/topic/stwrtng_infomap/tocStructrdWriting.html

The
first pdf covers the idea quite well.
It seems that he advocated labels (tags) for every chunk of text (he
dislikes paragraphs as units of content).
I've wanted this chunk tagging too, but no software does this well that I
have found.
He seems to have a company that sells software but it looks enterprisey and
windows only. I don't feel like trying it...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Steve Litt wrote:

> On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
> > On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> > > On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
> > >> What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
> > >> for
> > >> people here?
> > >
> > > Yes.
> > >
> > >> Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
> > >> reduce mental load?
> > >
> > > Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
> > > from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
> > > that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
> > > would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
> > >
> > >> In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
> > >> request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
> > >> wrong...
> > >
> > > Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
> > > settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
> >
> > The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
> > collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
> > etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
> > very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit "Collapse All"
> > and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
> > edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
> >
> > rh
>
> Vim does this with its "Folding" feature. Because it uses the Vim engine,
> VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting,
> although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and
> can
> lose data.
>
> SteveT
>
>

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Alan Tyree]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada ques...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
 following problem.
 It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
 we
 divide text into sections.
 In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
 \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
 This
 has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
 scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
 makes
 a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
 one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
 that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

 The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
 flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
 been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

 (scroll down to narrowing)
 http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

 This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
 grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
 section.

 Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
 This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
 have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

 Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
 paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
 most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
 work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
 too. So having one single file has advantages.

 What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
 people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
 reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
 request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
 wrong...

 Best,
 -Jose


Hi Jose

If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
program called hoisting: take one part of the outline tree and make it
appear for the time being to be the entire outline.

Hoisting is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
Grandview and others.

I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back in
those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.

Cheers,
Alan


 Jose Quesada, PhD.
 Max Planck Institute,
 Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
 Berlin
 http://www.josequesada.name/
 http://twitter.com/Quesada




-- 
Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi Alan,

Yes, hoisting is an interesting feature. But I would consider it a different
one, as it would operate on the outline sidebar. In my use case, I would
still prefer to have the full outline (i.e., no hoisting) available, because
that is what I'd use for moving around this large hypothetical doc.

I'd support hoisting too, but maybe making it not coupled with the narrowing
feature.

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 8:37 AM, Alan Tyree typh...@aanet.com.au wrote:



 On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada ques...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
 following problem.
 It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
 we
 divide text into sections.
 In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
 \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
 This
 has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I
 cannot
 scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
 makes
 a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
 one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
 that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

 The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
 flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
 been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

 (scroll down to narrowing)
 http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

 This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
 grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed
 down
 section.

 Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
 This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
 have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

 Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
 paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
 most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it
 would
 work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
 too. So having one single file has advantages.

 What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
 people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow
 and
 reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
 request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
 wrong...

 Best,
 -Jose


 Hi Jose

 If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
 program called hoisting: take one part of the outline tree and make it
 appear for the time being to be the entire outline.

 Hoisting is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
 is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
 Grandview and others.

 I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back
 in those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.

 Cheers,
 Alan


 Jose Quesada, PhD.
 Max Planck Institute,
 Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
 Berlin
 http://www.josequesada.name/
 http://twitter.com/Quesada




 --
 Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
 Tel:  04 2748 6206

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Abdelrazak Younes]

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make that 
feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you would 
also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling settings 
is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


On a related note, Rob Oak is working on improving the outliner so you 
might want to joind the development list and discuss the matter there 
with Rob and us.


Cheers,
Abdel.

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[rgheck]

On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
for

people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All 
and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.


rh

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Rob Oakes]

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 07:37 -0400, rgheck wrote:
 On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
  What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
  for
  people here?
 
  Yes.
 
  Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
  reduce mental load?
 
  Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
  from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
  that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
  would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
 
  In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
  request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
  wrong...
 
  Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
  settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
 The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
 collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
 etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
 very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All 
 and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
 edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
 rh
 

This is something that I would like to implement.  I also have some
other ideas regarding how to filter sections, but I haven't really
thought through them yet.  I've just been trying to get a simple
implementation of the outline improvements first.

I've found that my appetite can greatly exceed my available time if I'm
not careful.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Steve Litt]

On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
 On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
  What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
  for
  people here?
 
  Yes.
 
  Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
  reduce mental load?
 
  Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
  from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
  that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
  would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
 
  In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
  request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
  wrong...
 
  Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
  settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
 The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
 collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
 etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
 very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All
 and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
 edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
 rh

Vim does this with its Folding feature. Because it uses the Vim engine, 
VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting, 
although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and can 
lose data.

SteveT

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Alan Tyree]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada ques...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
 following problem.
 It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
 we
 divide text into sections.
 In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
 \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
 This
 has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
 scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
 makes
 a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
 one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
 that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

 The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
 flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
 been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

 (scroll down to narrowing)
 http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

 This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
 grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
 section.

 Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
 This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
 have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

 Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
 paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
 most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
 work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
 too. So having one single file has advantages.

 What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
 people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
 reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
 request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
 wrong...

 Best,
 -Jose


Hi Jose

If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
program called hoisting: take one part of the outline tree and make it
appear for the time being to be the entire outline.

Hoisting is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
Grandview and others.

I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back in
those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.

Cheers,
Alan


 Jose Quesada, PhD.
 Max Planck Institute,
 Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
 Berlin
 http://www.josequesada.name/
 http://twitter.com/Quesada




-- 
Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi Alan,

Yes, hoisting is an interesting feature. But I would consider it a different
one, as it would operate on the outline sidebar. In my use case, I would
still prefer to have the full outline (i.e., no hoisting) available, because
that is what I'd use for moving around this large hypothetical doc.

I'd support hoisting too, but maybe making it not coupled with the narrowing
feature.

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 8:37 AM, Alan Tyree typh...@aanet.com.au wrote:



 On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada ques...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
 following problem.
 It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
 we
 divide text into sections.
 In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
 \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
 This
 has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I
 cannot
 scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
 makes
 a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
 one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
 that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

 The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
 flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
 been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

 (scroll down to narrowing)
 http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

 This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
 grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed
 down
 section.

 Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
 This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
 have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

 Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
 paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
 most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it
 would
 work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
 too. So having one single file has advantages.

 What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
 people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow
 and
 reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
 request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
 wrong...

 Best,
 -Jose


 Hi Jose

 If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
 program called hoisting: take one part of the outline tree and make it
 appear for the time being to be the entire outline.

 Hoisting is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
 is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
 Grandview and others.

 I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back
 in those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.

 Cheers,
 Alan


 Jose Quesada, PhD.
 Max Planck Institute,
 Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
 Berlin
 http://www.josequesada.name/
 http://twitter.com/Quesada




 --
 Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
 Tel:  04 2748 6206

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Abdelrazak Younes]

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make that 
feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you would 
also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling settings 
is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


On a related note, Rob Oak is working on improving the outliner so you 
might want to joind the development list and discuss the matter there 
with Rob and us.


Cheers,
Abdel.

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[rgheck]

On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
for

people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All 
and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.


rh

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Rob Oakes]

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 07:37 -0400, rgheck wrote:
 On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
  What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
  for
  people here?
 
  Yes.
 
  Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
  reduce mental load?
 
  Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
  from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
  that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
  would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
 
  In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
  request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
  wrong...
 
  Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
  settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
 The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
 collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
 etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
 very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All 
 and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
 edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
 rh
 

This is something that I would like to implement.  I also have some
other ideas regarding how to filter sections, but I haven't really
thought through them yet.  I've just been trying to get a simple
implementation of the outline improvements first.

I've found that my appetite can greatly exceed my available time if I'm
not careful.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Steve Litt]

On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
 On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
  On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
  What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
  for
  people here?
 
  Yes.
 
  Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
  reduce mental load?
 
  Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
  from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
  that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
  would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
 
  In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
  request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
  wrong...
 
  Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
  settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
 
 The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
 collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
 etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
 very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit Collapse All
 and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
 edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
 
 rh

Vim does this with its Folding feature. Because it uses the Vim engine, 
VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting, 
although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and can 
lose data.

SteveT

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Alan Tyree]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
> following problem.
> It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
> we
> divide text into sections.
> In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
> \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
> This
> has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
> scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
> makes
> a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
> one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
> that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.
>
> The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
> flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
> been willing to pay. Then I saw this:
>
> (scroll down to narrowing)
> http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html
>
> This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
> grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
> section.
>
> Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
> This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
> have to deal with a master file with \inputs.
>
> Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
> paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
> most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
> work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
> too. So having one single file has advantages.
>
> What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
> people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
> reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
> request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
> wrong...
>
> Best,
> -Jose
>

Hi Jose

If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
program called "hoisting": take one part of the outline tree and make it
appear for the time being to be the entire outline.

"Hoisting" is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
Grandview and others.

I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back in
those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.

Cheers,
Alan

>
> Jose Quesada, PhD.
> Max Planck Institute,
> Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
> Berlin
> http://www.josequesada.name/
> http://twitter.com/Quesada
>



-- 
Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi Alan,

Yes, hoisting is an interesting feature. But I would consider it a different
one, as it would operate on the outline sidebar. In my use case, I would
still prefer to have the full outline (i.e., no hoisting) available, because
that is what I'd use for moving around this large hypothetical doc.

I'd support hoisting too, but maybe making it not coupled with the narrowing
feature.

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 8:37 AM, Alan Tyree  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Jose Quesada  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
>> following problem.
>> It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why
>> we
>> divide text into sections.
>> In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
>> \input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file.
>> This
>> has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I
>> cannot
>> scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle
>> makes
>> a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
>> one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
>> that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.
>>
>> The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
>> flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
>> been willing to pay. Then I saw this:
>>
>> (scroll down to narrowing)
>> http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html
>>
>> This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
>> grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed
>> down
>> section.
>>
>> Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
>> This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
>> have to deal with a master file with \inputs.
>>
>> Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
>> paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
>> most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it
>> would
>> work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
>> too. So having one single file has advantages.
>>
>> What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
>> people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow
>> and
>> reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
>> request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
>> wrong...
>>
>> Best,
>> -Jose
>>
>
> Hi Jose
>
> If I understand what you are talking about, it is what the old Thinktank
> program called "hoisting": take one part of the outline tree and make it
> appear for the time being to be the entire outline.
>
> "Hoisting" is available with certain Emacs modes (including Auctex), but it
> is not implemented as cleanly as in the old outliners like Thinktank,
> Grandview and others.
>
> I found it to be one of the most valuable aids to writing long works back
> in those days. I would strongly support it as a feature request.
>
> Cheers,
> Alan
>
>>
>> Jose Quesada, PhD.
>> Max Planck Institute,
>> Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
>> Berlin
>> http://www.josequesada.name/
>> http://twitter.com/Quesada
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Alan L Tyreehttp://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
> Tel:  04 2748 6206
>
>

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Abdelrazak Younes]

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make that 
feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you would 
also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling settings 
is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


On a related note, Rob Oak is working on improving the outliner so you 
might want to joind the development list and discuss the matter there 
with Rob and us.


Cheers,
Abdel.

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[rgheck]

On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:

On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
for

people here?


Yes.


Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load?


Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.



In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...


Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.


The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit "Collapse All" 
and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.


rh

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Rob Oakes]

On Fri, 2010-04-09 at 07:37 -0400, rgheck wrote:
> On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> > On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
> >> What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting 
> >> for
> >> people here?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> >> Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
> >> reduce mental load?
> >
> > Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily 
> > from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make 
> > that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you 
> > would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
> >
> >> In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
> >> request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
> >> wrong...
> >
> > Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling 
> > settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
> >
> The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to 
> collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions, 
> etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a 
> very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit "Collapse All" 
> and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to 
> edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
> 
> rh
> 

This is something that I would like to implement.  I also have some
other ideas regarding how to filter sections, but I haven't really
thought through them yet.  I've just been trying to get a simple
implementation of the outline improvements first.

I've found that my appetite can greatly exceed my available time if I'm
not careful.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Steve Litt]

On Friday 09 April 2010 07:37:18 rgheck wrote:
> On 04/09/2010 03:49 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
> > On 04/09/2010 07:31 AM, Jose Quesada wrote:
> >> What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting
> >> for
> >> people here?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> >> Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
> >> reduce mental load?
> >
> > Not just you. The good thing with LyX is that you can navigate easily
> > from paragraph to paragraph with the keyboard. But in order to make
> > that feature really useful without being forced to use the mouse, you
> > would also need shortcuts for navigating between sections.
> >
> >> In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
> >> request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
> >> wrong...
> >
> > Should not be terribly hard indeed. All the code for scrolling
> > settings is in BufferView class if you want to experiment.
> 
> The other thing I've considered, along these lines, is the ability to
> collapse sections, a la the ability to collapse for loops, functions,
> etc, in any decent programming editor. That would in some ways serve a
> very similar purpose, especially if you could just hit "Collapse All"
> and then use the outliner to uncollapse what you actually wanted to
> edit. Little triangles at the side, like in QtCreator, would work too.
> 
> rh

Vim does this with its "Folding" feature. Because it uses the Vim engine, 
VimOutliner also does collapse/expand. VimOutliner also does hoisting, 
although in my opinion VimOutliner hoisting isn't ready for prime time and can 
lose data.

SteveT

interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi,

Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
following problem.
It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why we
divide text into sections.
In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
\input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file. This
has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle makes
a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

(scroll down to narrowing)
http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
section.

Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
too. So having one single file has advantages.

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada

interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi,

Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
following problem.
It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why we
divide text into sections.
In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
\input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file. This
has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle makes
a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

(scroll down to narrowing)
http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
section.

Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
too. So having one single file has advantages.

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada

interesting narrowing feature in a text editor

[Jose Quesada]

Hi,

Since many people here edit long documents, they may have faced the
following problem.
It's difficult to keep in your mind a large chunk of content. This is why we
divide text into sections.
In lyx/latex, you can also have a master document and insert sections as
\input. This is very helpful because each section is then its own file. This
has an immediate effect on mental workload: for me, just seen that I cannot
scroll out of the section, and the right scrollbar has a bigger handle makes
a big difference, making me more relaxed. I try to make sections that fit
one screen; this is common advice in programming too (don't make functions
that scroll out of sight) for the same mental workload reasons.

The problem is that splitting a doc into files and \input them is not as
flexible as just taking care of sections. It adds overhead. A price I've
been willing to pay. Then I saw this:

(scroll down to narrowing)
http://www.emeditor.com/modules/feature1/rewrite/tc_35.html

This is exactly what I want. The only thing I'd add would be to make the
grayed out parts non-scrollable, ie lock the scrolling to the narrowed down
section.

Clicking on the outline sidebar would optionally narrow down the section.
This way one can navigate a long doc, nave very focused editing, and not
have to deal with a master file with \inputs.

Change tracking would be improved as a side effect. If you remove a
paragraph and paste it on another section (which is an independent file)
most vcs and diff programs would have completely lost track of it: it would
work as if you added brand new text to  the section. It's harder to undo
too. So having one single file has advantages.

What I would like to know is... is this narrowing feature interesting for
people here? Or is it just me who thinks that it would improve workflow and
reduce mental load? In case it's interesting, I'll file an enhancement
request. Doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement, but I may be
wrong...

Best,
-Jose

Jose Quesada, PhD.
Max Planck Institute,
Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
http://www.josequesada.name/
http://twitter.com/Quesada