On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 09:28:25PM +0300, Martin Vermeer wrote: > > Could you list the advantages of an exposed inset UI? > > 1) You know precisely where a typed character goes -- or where an > already typed character belongs. Inside or outside any given inset. > A special case of this is for blanks, which don't display much in > terms of rendering style. > > 2) The discipline of nesting is imposed corresponding to the logic of > semantics. Meaning, in the semantic sense, typically forms a tree. > Exceptions to that which I have seen are either more or less > pathological, or esoteric. > > 3) No ambiguity about nesting order.
I'm confused about the difference between 2 and 3. They sound like the same thing: an inset UI enforces, clearly, a hierarchical style tree. > 4) Because of 2) and 3), no problems with our favourite back-ends, LaTeX > and XML. I presume you're referring the specific case of getting certain style "ligatures" wrong when you have to decompose a non-hierarchical style system into a hier one, right? Otherwise it sounds like you're talking about implementation. Here are the user interface advantages I have for a ranges UI: 1) familiarity. This is how every other editor I'm familiar with works. In particular problems like "what happens if I have some text with style selected, and choose another style" can be solved in the same fashion as other programs, when it makes sense 2) The existence of a style attribute does not affect how and where I can select text 3) Selection never 'jumps' - it always starts at the point I started, and ends at the nearest character to the position of the pointer 4) all cursor movement is based upon what I can see 5) Line-wrapping looks and behaves naturally. Note that I'm not listing overlapping styles. I don't think that's an interesting use case. regards john
