Splitting this off into a separate thread.
On Feb 1, 2007, at 3:48 PM, D John Anderson wrote:
Well, one big difference between Chandler's pseudo CLI and real
CLIs is that we're not displaying the results of the command in
the same field as the command itself. We have the rest of the UI
for that.
I'm not sure why it's okay to load multiple commands into the
palette, but it's not okay to include /Find in that list of commands.
I was thinking of a palette that acted the same as the single line
text entry field, except that it contained space for more than one
line. As you typed new commands the old commands would scroll up,
giving you a history of previous commands you entered. Following
the conventions of other shells, typing up arrow might go back in
the command history so you could choose previous commands without a
lot of retyping. You could resize the palette to include as many
lines as you'd like: one or many. You could also add some UI to the
palette, e.g. some buttons, that would enter some common commands.
So in either the palette or the current search field I was
proposing displaying the results of the command in the application,
not the widget itself.
Yes, this is a nice idea and would grow to accommodate IM and chat as
well. I can imagine it being useful integrated into the main window,
perhaps at the bottom, underneath the summary and detail panes.
So the issue isn't about multiple commands in the palette, it's
about not confusing the meaning of a search box by requiring that
you type "/search". I hoped to avoid this confusion by putting
quick entry in a different widget, one that worked even better for
quick entry than the search box, leaving search to be the familiar
search we all know and love.
I think this is the crux of the confusion. Ii don't think of the
field in the toolbar as a search field. I think of it as a 'command-
line' text field where search is one of the command options. Is it
the rounded ends that are confusing the issue? We can change it to be
a square field on Mac. I don't think there's a difference really for
windows and linux.
I think the rounded looks nicer. Although I know it's the convention
on Mac, I'm not sure how many users actually explicitly understand
that. I think it's the magnifying icon and the word Search that clues
people into the idea that a field is for search. But I'm not stuck on
the rounded field.
Mimi
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