On 12/9/2013 3:09 PM, Edward K. Ream wrote:
Notes from http://youtu.be/xYiiD-p2q80: (at 5:50)
The more consistent the operation of different functions, the less
users have to learn.
The consistency of an interactive system strongly affects how quickly
users progress from *slow operation*, to automatic, *faster operation*.
In an inconsistent system, users cannot predict how its different
functions work, so they must learn each one anew, which slows their
learning of the overall system and keeps their use of it a controlled,
attention-consuming process.
Comments:
The focus on operations is interesting. Leo's operations are much
less uniform than Leo outlines, so perhaps there is some room for
improvement. Otoh, it's not clear how Leo could be substantially
better in this area. Leo is consciously modeled on Emacs, and I know
of no obvious way to do substantially better for most operations.
Still, some recent improvements show some (smallish) ways that Leo has
increased consistency. For example, the markup_inline.py plugin
implements Ctrl-B,I,U Bold Italic Underline markup in plain text.
Summary:
Like Emacs and vim, Leo's commands require a lot of learning. One
could imagine a toolbar that would make such commands more accessible
to newbies. However, the Cmds menu is a way of indicating the very
large number of commands available, so Leo is likely no worse than
Emacs and vim in this regard.
As present, I see no huge opportunity for improvement here. A toolbar
might improve matters, or just confuse users more.
Edward
On a semi-related note, the Leo API is a bit inconsistent too, if only
in it's alternating usage of underscore_delimited and camelCase method
names. Though I suppose that's an artifact of 20 years of development
with no (explicit) style guidelines. Organically growing APIs always
have rough spots like this.
-->Jake
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