On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 5:53 AM, Edward K. Ream <[email protected]> wrote:
The recent discussions about UI issues should focus on what we want, not > how that will happen. > > You might think that a piece of paper is our most important design tool > when thinking about UI's. But the *layout* of frames and widgets isn't > so important. Instead, it is the *hidden* relationships that matter. > The last paragraph is a major Aha. The UI can express (or obscure) those hidden relationships, but that's *secondary.* The UI will "emerge" only when the hidden relationships are fully understood. *tl;dr:* *Leo's present UI is good enough!* It needs only *tiny* tweaks! I thought about hidden relationships all day yesterday. At first I was confused the relationship between rendering, syntax coloring and images. Now I see: - @language directives already replace the kind of drop-down menus used in Jupyter and Quiver. - Syntax coloring has nothing to do with images and/or math symbols. In the first draft of this post I said this: - The presence of the VR pane *itself* is a useful hidden relationship. If the VR pane exists, Leo should show the body pane as "raw" text. Otherwise, Leo should render @language latex sections *in the body pane*. - Leo should render @language latex sections in the body pane if the VR pane does not exist. But no, that's making things *way *too difficult. We don't want to complicate the body pane! The simplest thing that could possibly work is this: 1. The body pane always shows *raw* (unrendered) text, just as at present. 2. The VR pane is where all rendering happens, just as at present. 3. Leo should have commands that show/hide the body pane and/or everything except the VR pane. Point 3 instantly gives us Quiver's Preview, Presentation and Full Screen modes. The VR2 plugin gives the ability to render multiple nodes (a node and its subtree). The VR plugin should do likewise. My high school math teacher, Dr. Moore (yes, she had a PhD in mathematics), talked about having "our head save our heals" :-) Keeping Leo's present UI (including Terry's excellent EP work) will save weeks or months of tricky (and useless!) work: A. No need to insert pictures/symbols in body text. More importantly, no need to *remember* pictures/symbols when saving/loading files, and no need to *keep track* of pictures/symbols when rearranging text. This is a big win all by itself. B. No need to (somehow!) figure out how to render/syntax color sections (in the same node) delimited by different @language directives. No need to complicate the syntax colorer. Leo will syntax color @language latex in the body pane as always. C. No need for hacks telling whether body text should be rendered or not. *Summary* Terry has said previously that we don't need to render text in the body pane. Now I understand why, in detail. Leo will soon have commands that make it easy to show/hide the body pane or everything except the VR pane. These commands will give Leo the essence of Quiver's Preview, Presentation and Full Screen modes. Ditto for Jupyter notebook views. Your comments, please. Edward -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
