In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Christiaan Hofman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5 Jun 2008, at 8:20 PM, Adam R. Maxwell wrote: > > > I always wondered why the combo box in the add-field sheet allowed > > invalid names like "Remote URL" when using the drop-down. I had a > > hunch > > that fixing bug #1984947 might break this, so I tried it in the latest > > nightly...and indeed "Remote URL" no longer works. > > > > So it appears that this worked because the formatters were implemented > > incorrectly, and validation only worked in a limited set of > > circumstances. Oops. > > > > Ah, yes, that was the reason it was never implemented to validate. I > removed it and added a comment. Nope, it's just an ancient bug that I can blame on Mike. I'm guessing that's also why I had problems with some of the format failure delegate methods in the editor, a long time ago. Anyway, I think it's wrong to implement that sometimes-allowing-spaces logic in a formatter by having a broken primitive method, since it makes assumptions about which methods are called and when (and ties it to a specific control and/or OS release). > > Any ideas on improving the add-field sheet? Users are perpetually > > confused by the inability to type e.g. "Remote URL" when told to add > > it, > > and it's not intuitive that you could choose it from the drop-down. > > (I > > had a couple of offlist back-and-forth sessions on this last week that > > prompted me to add step-by-step instructions to the wiki). > > > > Adding a popup of predefined "special" fields with a textfield for > > direct entry might work, but it would also be confusing (didn't we do > > that at one point?). > > That would be even more confusing than the popup-like setup we have > now, I think. Sadly, I don't have a better UI widget in mind, but I was hoping someone else might...maybe the users list would have an idea. Okay, before hitting Post I had an idea: the drop-down is too small (IMO) to easily find fields anyway. What about having a two-column tableview of fields and checkboxes, with the option to add an additional row for unknown fields? Then you could see all of the predefined "Author" fields at a glance and so on, as well. For the organization freaks, they could even be grouped by field type in an outline view (Person, String, Boolean...). > > I wonder how often you want to add a field that's not declared as a > > standard/default/custom field in the type manager? That's the only > > case > > the formatter should be concerned with. > > But it's also often quicker to just type (and complete) instead of > searching a long menu. And to have a sheet to enter a custom field > attached to the sheet to choose a field: ouch. Having an additional sheet-on-a-sheet would be bad, for sure. But the fact that you /can't/ type and complete "Remote Field" is another part of what makes the present system a counterintuitive UI. The number of times people on the users list have asked about this (and been told to STFA/RTFM) bears that out! -- adam ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-develop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-develop
