Konrad Hofbauer wrote:
Edwin (and others),
great thanks for starting to work on this!
I have a number of suggestions for changes, strictly based on the HIG
[1] (except those sentences starting with IMO). If something is left
open by the HIG, I refer to what I assume are applications that well
consider the HIG, namely Safari and OmniGroup software (="OG").
Unfortunately the HIG do not cover tabbed applications, so I take Safari
3 and Firefox 3 as reference here.
Instead of having different ui/inc-files circulating around, I think it
makes more sense if you maintain the "master" version and include from
my suggestion what you deem appropriate. OK ???
I go menu-by-menu (in random order), and only talk about the suggested
changes (everything else OK). I say in advance that IMO the
Document-Menu should disappear.
**** File ***
The HIG says (also related to an older discussion):
"Close" should close the active tab (or window if it is the last tab).
Add a "Close File" to close the active file (in all views/windows). [2]
And combining this with what Safari (and Firefox) do with regards to
tabs, I propose:
New Window
New Tab
New File
New From Template ...
Open ...
Open Recent >
---------------
Close Window
Close Tab
Close File
Save
Save As ...
Save All
Revert to Saved
---------------
Import ... (more to this later)
Export As ... (more to this later) [3]
---------------
Version Control
Compress File (but IMO this should really be IN the document settings)
Statistics ... (this is like Properties, or Get Info)
---------------
Print ...
Document Settings ... [4]
Concerning Import/Export:
According to HIG this should rather be a normal Save As / Open-dialogue,
with a drop-down-list to select the format to export/import.
This is not just a menu change, but would allow the IMO nice feature of
being able to specify a file-name / location for exports (see this as
wish-list entry).
Having something like "Export As", where the filename can be specified
would be nice, sure.
However, export using the same base filename as the LyX file is a very
common case, so that ought to be possible still, and with no more
keypresses or waiting than today.
Bringing up a save dialog with a default filename filled in probably
achieves this, but be careful. Dialogs that populate themselves
with a list of existing files tends to be rather slow to open when there
are lots of files, or when the folder is on some other server. Now, that
is necessary when opening, but definitely not when saving/exporting.
(Also, many such dialogs are very slow because they use one call to the
filesystem and one call to the window system per file existing in the
folder. That approach is wrong because it is too slow. Read the entire
file list first, which should be no slower than an "ls" command. Then
fill the display quickly, perhaps it can be done with one operation now
that everything is in memory. "Save as" from firefox is totally rotten
for example, when there are 20 000 files already. And I don't need to
see them at all, just SAVE THIS.)
Something to think about if this change is implemented.
Helge Hafting
