On 2/2/15 5:34 AM, Matt Wilkie wrote:
Dufriz, I'm in general agreement with the theme. An improvement in
user friendliness would do Leo very well. I think the biggest problem
in accomplishing it is people here are already doing what they know
how to do, and smooth user interfaces isn't in the skill bag.
Matt, and others who have commented on this topic: I too agree. Setting
up a space for people to record request, ideas, proposed projects, etc.
would be a good start. Also, those of us capable of hacking on Leo
should feel free to take on some of these. (My major project, assuming
I get enough time for it, will be porting "myself" from Ecco to Leo; in
the process, I fully expect to do some customization, and quite possibly
improving the general user experience where I can, within my time
constraints. I'll be happy to contribute the results to the community.)
Don
*Knowledge-base*, wiki, whatever: now that we've settled on Github we
do have a wiki available:
https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/wiki. If somone wants to
start planting seeds I'm happy to help garden.
*Changing settings* could/should be easier: I agree, I wish for this
frequently. (and this past year's addition of having the *Settings.leo
files open from a menu is a great step towards this, thanks!).
As I recall, when the subject last came up Edward said he didn't see a
way to implement it that wasn't more trouble than it was worth, both
in terms of developer time to make it (probably his), and in debugging
and maintaining afterwards. Still, other programs manage it, so it's
possible.
*Key bindings*: this is a place where it would be (relatively) easy
for non-developer to make a contribution. They are just tables after all:
action = Alt-A
There could be a "Keys Like Windows/Gtk/..." template node that a
person or a script copies into myLeoSettings.leo. If you build the
table I'll volunteer to work on tracking down the Leo terms for the
actions.
cheers,
Matt
On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Dufriz
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
While Leo is constantly enriching itself, with new features and
new technologies, it's not improving much in terms of user
friendliness (I will provide details below), and this is one of
the main reasons that put off (read: keep away) users. This is an
old refrain of mine, and every now and then I feel compelled to
express it, so bear with me.
Recently I was asked, on another thread: what is there to be done
to make Leo more user friendly? Ahm, a lot. An awful lot.
Before mentioning some of the points which IMHO need to be worked
on, I would like to make a suggestion: why not keep track of the
users' suggestions/feature requests in a more organized way? Lots
of useful comments are made every day on the mailing list: adding
this, removing that, etc. Most of them are soon forgotten, with
the constant flow of new posts, and the ever-changing variety of
topics. Moreover these suggestions are scattered here and there,
often buried in threads where they should not even belong.
What I am proposing is, basically, a system for keeping track of
user comments/requests in a more organic way. It could be a wiki,
or something else.
Now, with regard to user friendliness, I would like to point out
that IMHO, the best judgement in this regard is that made by the
outsiders, or newcomers, rather than by the developers and the old
users. For a simple reason: user friendliness is all about
intuitiveness and giving a pleasant feeling to those who are *not*
familiar with a program. And in this regard (sorry guys) Leo
leaves a lot to be desired. Old time Leo users who are perfectly
comfortable and cozy with the current setup may possibly not
understand why this is so important.
Some (only a few) of the areas that need improvement:
* the leading node-type @ markers in the headlines are very ugly
to see, and clutter the screen. Why not replace them with
customized note-type icons? Of course, they are an important
metadata, which should be preserved somewhere. But why make it a
part of the headline? At the very least, could we limit their
visibility to when we are editing the headline?
* Changing settings is very awkward, as pointed out in several old
posts. Something needs to be done. IIRC Terry already agreed on
this in principle.
* more standard default key bindings. For instance, what about F2
for editing a headline? I know, this is not such a big deal,
because users can change the key bindings to their liking, but why
not make things easier for newcomers?
I do not want to insist too much here, listing all the finer
points, but in short there are several other UI improvements that
would be really welcome.
I am venturing here a proposal for the developers: why not go in a
sort feature-freeze mode for some time (i.e. stopping adding new
features), and focus instead on improving the user interface? This
dedicated period could be set on the calendar, perhaps even a
couple of weeks every three months, or the like. I am sure this
would generate a lot of user feedback.
All the best,
Dufriz
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