In the recent discussion, I had suggested that in some situations, one might encounter items that need to be classified under two or more different headings (or branches in this case) and that the best way to visually depict this without cluttering up the page into an indiscernible tangle may to use aliases similar to Apple. An alias, which is essentially a hyperlink to the original file on the hard disk, might be depicted as follows. Ill first need to do some orientation to try and describe this.
In the recently discussed Cactus window, title bars of items from Chandlers various sub-applications were suggested to be allowed to be dragged and placed onto a user-defined cactus for classification and project planning purposes. So that the user was not forced to open up each title bar in order to re-assign its tag values, it was also suggested that as soon as a user selects a title bar (by single clicking it) then six radio buttons would appear surrounding the title bar. Three radio buttons on top was suggested to be for Now-Later-Done triaging. Three radio buttons along the bottom was suggested to be for Time Details management (due date / alarm), Linking to other items, and the Delete button. If a title bar on the cactus has aliases of itself on other branches, then one way to depict this graphically may that when this title bar is selected (by single click) then, not only do the tagging radio buttons appear around this title bar, but also, we could have greyed out (or semitransparent) radio buttons appear around the items aliases on other branches. Hence, the user may be able to discern that what ever changes he will make to the selected item, he will be making to all of its aliases as well. In another case scenario, say a selected title bar on the cactus has an alias on another tabbed page within the Cactus sub-application. In this situation, when the title bar is selected and the tagging radio buttons appear around the bar, we could have the Tab containing the page where the second alias is located begin flashing its Tab heading. This could signify to the user that what ever changes he will be making to the selected title bar, he would also be making to its alias on the second tabbed page. In the course of day to day PIM activities, I suspect that there wont be much need for aliases as the human mind tends to like to organize things linearly if at all possible and the use of aliases in a potential cactus sub-application would likely be the exception rather than the rule. Never-the-less, the ability to handle such tricky items while keeping things visually clean and organized would help to allow Chandler to become a powerful virtual graphing and planning tool that can meet the growing needs of tech savvy consumers over the coming years. --Selva __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
