Hi Ilya,
Please see inlines below...
On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Ilya Konstantinov wrote:
> Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote:
>
> >Hi Waleed,
> >I think that the user needs to see the LRM in some way so that he can
> >delete it if he wants to (and put it back afterwards if need be). It's not
> >good to have something invisible that changes the display of the text so
> >radically. As to the actual design of how to do this - that's best left up
> >to professional interface desingers.
> >
> >
> Am I correct that in some unbelievable way, we came to the decission
> that the end-user should be familiar with the Unicode BiDi Alogrithm's
> (UBA) workings? This is unthinkable, and at the same time quite expected
> when the software is being designed by techies with no UI Design people
> to overlook their work.
The user does not need to understand Unicode or the bidi algorithm. We
provide the LRM automatically. The usere sees it and can delete it if he
wants to. The effect on the text is immediately apparent visually. This is
a self-teaching feature - if you can see the character that is causing the
change in the behavior. There's no learning curve here.
- yba
>
> 1. We started from the Microsoft Office implementation of BiDi controls;
> an implementation which manages, at the same time, to give the users
> precise control over direction, and to completely shield them from the UBA.
> 2. Then somehow we slided to a heuristic-based algorithm, which works
> most of the times, and at times when it doesn't work, the user is
> expected to insert "control characters". You'll have a hard time
> explaining control characters to a non-techie...
> 3. Then, finally, we have to the conclusion that the user needs to see
> those control characters. So, even if the heuristics work as intended,
> our non-techie would still be bewildered as to whether that "silly
> character" will come out in print. Not to mention that you'll have to
> explain the non-techie what zero-width characters are, and how come
> pasting such a character somewhere affects the formatting of the text
> before it.
>
> Yes, the UBA makes a lot of sense to all of us, and if the non-techie
> will spend a few hours understanding it, it'll make sense to him as well.
> Thing is: With Microsoft, this learning curve isn't required! As much as
> it doesn't make sense to us "UBA-purists", the "Input language affects
> direction" metaphor is *very natural* to the casual user.
>
> Let's look back at what we've done and think: Are we following the
> principle of 'let the user's work flow and interrupt him for
> technicalities as little as possible' ?
>
> Guys, I hate to be the party-pooper, but that's what UI Design's job is
> all about :)
>
>
--
EE 77 7F 30 4A 64 2E C5 83 5F E7 49 A6 82 29 BA ~. .~ Tk Open Systems
=}------------------------------------------------ooO--U--Ooo------------{=
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - tel: +972.2.679.5364, http://www.tkos.co.il -
==============================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with "unsubscribe hebrew" in the message body.
