Le 20/12/2015 17:31, Enrico Forestieri a écrit :
Do you mean that you expect the parbreak separator to be used often on
purpose, instead of a plain separator, not just as the result of a
conversion 2.1 -> 2.2 ?
It is annoying repeating again all discussions made at the time those
insets were introduced, but let's do it. There was consensus that the
--Separator-- layout should have been dropped and something else adopted
in its place. The output should have not changed. So, as the Separator
layout was introducing a blank line after itself, the new inset come in two
versions, one not introducing a blank line and the other one introducing
it. In this way, using the parbreak separator as the default one, I was
hoping to avoid complaints. There is no provision for introducing this
separator from the gui and it should be introduced only when needed. It is
only introduced when pressing Enter at the beginning of a Standard layout
immediately following a non-standard one. In this way, it allows to
reintroduce the same environment in an intuitive way and exactly mimics
the behavior of the old Separator layout. If this is not deemed important,
then letting always introduce the plain separator is very simple. However,
when converting old documents, the parbreak separator should be used in
place of the Separator layout. So, I think that it might be more confusing
using two different versions for the same purpose.
Maybe I just fail to see its purpose and in particular why it is more
important than the plain separator.
It is not more important. I hope the above helps clarifying it.
This symbol is essentially representing a latex blank
line and I find its actual shape the best way to convey this concept. For
example, this is how a blank line would be represented in a word processor
when you ask to also show non-printable characters.
This makes no sense to me. In a word processor this symbol would
represent a new line in the final output, and this corresponds to the
new line inset in LyX.
And a newline symbol all alone on the line represents a blank line.
What about a shortened plain separator lowered to the baseline with a
small bar on the end, in other words:
* A bottom right corner ⌟ but elongated (notice that this is Unicode 1.1
and could therefore be used directly, but misses the "elongated" part)
* Something similar to the caracters ⨼ or ⏗ but lowered to the baseline
(and bigger)
* What we have now, without the arrow head, thicker, and down to the
baseline.
Attached is a mock-up using the ⌟ character (what I am actually thinking
of is a bit wider to remind of the plain separator). (Notice that it
would be nice as well to hide the paragraph mark when appropriate.)
This is already used for denoting a parbreak in change tracking and would
not be similar but exactly the same symbol. Moreover, I don't like it at
all. What about using a left-right arrow? For example ↔.
But you just said that the reason for having a "non-obtrusive" symbol
instead of a horizontal line was that it was going to be used at the end
of certain lines, and now you are telling me that the only way to
introduce it is to have it alone on a line?
See explanation above. The same inset is also used to artificially
introduce a blank line where old LyX versions were doing it.
What about:
* Shift+Enter: plain separator (and restart the environment)
* Alt+M P : parbreak separator
?
Please, you are free to start your fight for this change but I will not
follow. Generally, when I am not satisfied with a default preference
setting I simply change it. This is less stressing and easier than to deal
with long and unfruitful discussions.
But, if there was only one thing to fix before 2.2, it would be the symbol!
Certainly!
Dear Enrico,
Thank you for the recent patches that took into account some of my remarks.
I have been using master a lot recently and I noticed another issue
which annoyed me: In 2.1, the behaviour when typing Enter at the
beginning of a paragraph is consistently to start a new paragraph before
it. In 2.2, the behaviour changes and sometimes it introduces a parbreak
separator instead, after a non-standard paragraph. The behaviour is now
inconsistent. I think that the introduction of a parbreak separator
after a non-standard paragraph should only happen on an empty paragraph.
This does not change the amount of Enter required to introduce a
separator from a non-standard paragraph, but restores the consistency of
introducing a new paragraph with Enter at the start of a paragraph.
Also, I wanted to say that given that I did not follow the original
conversations, I have more of a user's view on this, so I do not think
that my comments are redundant. Users, new users, now, and in two years,
are not going to care about historic reasons for such interface choices...
For the symbol itself, my suggestion was a very elongated version of ⌟,
meant to recall the plain separator inset. But, a character that
would match the meaning would be the pilcrow sign (¶). One would just
have to make sure the a grey pilcrow sign (from end-of-paragraph marks)
is not displayed after a red pilcrow sign because this would look weird
(although could be allowed as a temporary measure). On the other hand,
what was the idea behind your suggestion of ↔ ?
Finally, for the entry method, you are already changing the meaning of
"Alt+M P" from "parbreak separator" to "plain separator", so in any case
you are already making a choice. I wanted to say that if the one who
implements a new feature does not think about what is the best default,
who does? I had to configure LyX for several co-authors and already have
too much settings to remember to change (enabling paragraph marks,
setting forward-search, some shortcuts...).
Sincerely,
Guillaume
