Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-12-15 Thread Beni Cherniavsky
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 16:13, 0x zero_...@yahoo.com wrote:


  M$ Office AutoCorrect/AutoFormat
  leverages Undo for similar functionality: the
  autolinking/autoformating is added to the undo list as a
  separate action from the typing, so that you can just type
  and press Ctrl+Z to supress the autothings when your
  don't want them.
 
  Currently in zim they are fused: FooBarSPACE turns
  it into a link when you add the SPACE; Ctrl+Z
  removes the link but also the SPACE; pressing
  SPACE again to continue typing restores the link.
 
  So maybe we want to adopt the separately-undoable
  autolinking model?

 I like this - in fact, I already use that (the format and/or markup going
 into the undo buffer separately from the text) other editors

 UPDATE: turns out it already works this way in perl zim, and almost-works
in pyzim!
pyzim does undo the autolinking separately, but currently places the cursor
before the space.
So to enter a non-link FooBar , you press: FooBarSPACECtrl+ZRIGHT.
Will be fixed.  See https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/487084 for details.

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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-24 Thread Jaap Karssenberg

0x wrote:

I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time going back and removing GUI-generated links 
(in Zim) - more time doing that, in fact, than I would manually entering 
links to begin with.

What I would like to have (to do, perhaps) with the Zim GUI is what was suggested regarding a checkbox or radio button that will turn the auto-linking associated with CaML case on/off.  

I am working mostly with software development documentation and notes - /everything/ is CaML case - I don't mind having to hit ^L to make some text into a link.  
  


Uhm - did you ever check the preferences menu ? There is in fact exact 
such a checkbox there to control auto-linking of camel case words...


-- Jaap


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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-24 Thread Jaap Karssenberg

Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
... 8 ...
Currently pyzim is close to the second and that's annoying - you have 
to type the same thing twice to create a link!


Let me detail how it is intended to work in the current implementation: 
if the target and label already differ than the target will stay fixed 
while the text can be freely edited. However when both are the same they 
stay linked until the user eplicitly sets a different target.


The reasoning is that it would be very counter intuitive to see an URL, 
edit it, and find the target did not update. The same goes for page names.


The current dialog in pyzim allows you to specify both text an target, 
but this is not mandatory. If you enter the target, hit Enter twice 
(leaving the text empty) it will just use the target as the text. If you 
select text and open the dialog hitting Enter twice will turn it into 
a link.


I myself find that links become better behaved by treating them like 
objects that need to be edited with a dialog instead of a formatting 
style. But obviously there are corner cases.


The auto-linking of urls, camelcase, etc. should further reduce the 
numer of times that you actually need to use the dialog. Auto-linking 
behavior should be controllable from preferences because it can be very 
annoying when it gets things wrong. Also the undo action should properly 
undo autolinking as a separate editing step.


... 8 ...
I'm not sure how all this should be blended, but here are some 
tricks/ideas:


* Show broken links in red: this makes it obvious when you are 
breaking/retargetting links.


This is something I would really like - at least for internal links - an 
url checker is something else. I did not implement this in the perl 
version because of the cost of resolving links. In the python version we 
have the SQLLite driven index which make looking up page links much 
cheaper.


Should also set a style property for broken links in html export while 
we are at it.



* Don't even show text field in Link dialog, only target.
  This makes it clear that text is edited by directly editing the page.


Disadvantage is that when auto-formatting does not pick up the link you 
first type text, then go back select it and add the target. While now I 
hit the dialog, enter the target, hit Enter, and continue typing. Maybe 
very personal preference, but I don't like going back while typing in a 
flow.


* Have checkbox or radiobox in Link dialog to toggle 1:1 mode (default 
on).


How would that work ?? Once you have both a label and a target, how 
would you display it after switching back ? In general I would like to 
avoid switchable behavior for this.


* Show the 2 link modes in different colors.  E.g. blue/red for 1:1 
links, green for other links.


This could very well be done. Maybe keep the same color, but use e.g. a 
subtle underline to distinguish. Anyway the style would be controllable 
from the config file - so you cold make the colors more obvious if you 
want to.


* While the editing cursor is on a link, it expands to also show the 
target, e.g. [link|target].
  When the cursor leaves the link, it collapses and you see just the 
text in blue.


This is difficult to get right when it is inline in the textview. Also 
makes the page look unstable because text starts moving around when 
you move the cursor over the page.


Please note that the signals for mouse over are there already. Link 
target is displayed in the status bar on mouse over. Probably would more 
obvious when using tooltips for this. Should not be too hard to make.


* While the editing cursor is on a link, a tooltip-like mini-dialog 
hovers beneath it.

  This is more discoverable and friendly, though less keyboard-friendly.
  Gmail does this.


See above. At least statusbar display could be linked to cursor as well. 
Tooltip linked to cursor might be a bit annoying.



* Consider Tomboy autolinking for creating links of the simple 1:1 kind?


You mean turning words that match page names into links ? This has been 
implemented in some zim version already as a hidden option, but never 
worked very well. Goes back to the same discussion about the cost of 
resolving a link. Can now be done much easier due to the new page index.


Would not use this myself, but I would welcome a patch for this as long 
as it is packaged as a plugin. Plugins can already hook into 
auto-formatting behavior, so while typing auto-linking can be done. And 
a plugin could check the page when loading.



Please let me know your thoughts on these topics, and where you see room 
for improvement.


Regards,

Jaap


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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-23 Thread Beni Cherniavsky

 I think it should be a switch - a button on the toolbar that toggles the
 functionality on and off like the read-only toggle.   There should be a
 keystroke for it, too, of course.

 Sorry, not following.  Toggle which functionality?  Autolinking on/off?
Editing changes link/label?  Something else?


 I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time going back and removing
 GUI-generated links (in Zim) - more time doing that, in fact, than I would
 manually entering links to begin with.

 What I would like to have (to do, perhaps) with the Zim GUI is what was
 suggested regarding a checkbox or radio button that will turn the
 auto-linking associated with CaML case on/off.

 I am working mostly with software development documentation and notes -
 /everything/ is CaML case - I don't mind having to hit ^L to make some text
 into a link.

 Edit - Preferences - Editing - Autolink CamelCase checkbox!
It's there in both perl zim and pyzim.
Or do you mean make it accessible from toolbar  keystroke so that you can
change it frequenly?


 I would also Like the color coding of broken links tha was suggested, since
 my common workflow is - type in the literal links (this would be with the
 option mentioned above turned on), then make another pass through the text
 creating and editing links.

 Most wikis have some kind of coding for broken links.  Anybody sees a
reason we shouldn't follow?


 In addition to those points, I will add that in most cases the link
 generation in Zim is find - I like being able to type e.g. Glossary:TCP and
 get a link that - when I click it will create a page in the Glossary that I
 can fill in.   I just need to be able to disable that functionality to keep
 e.g. spurious links from being generated when I want to use the literal
 page-name string instead of the link - if I format the string (e.g. as
 literal, bold, italic or whatever - that helps, but formatting is
 often lost, and the links re-generated.  Probably this is different topic,
 though.

 M$ Office AutoCorrect/AutoFormat leverages Undo for similar functionality:
the autolinking/autoformating is added to the undo list as a separate action
from the typing, so that you can just type and press Ctrl+Z to supress the
autothings when your don't want them.

Currently in zim they are fused: FooBarSPACE turns it into a link when you
add the SPACE; Ctrl+Z removes the link but also the SPACE; pressing
SPACE again to continue typing restores the link.

So maybe we want to adopt the separately-undoable autolinking model?
It doesn't solve other questions but it does give a one-press way to decide
autolinking case-by-case.

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin c...@users.sf.net
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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-23 Thread Beni Cherniavsky
On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 13:26, Beni Cherniavsky c...@users.sf.net wrote:

 0x zero_...@yahoo.com wrote:


 In addition to those points, I will add that in most cases the link
 generation in Zim is find - I like being able to type e.g. Glossary:TCP and
 get a link that - when I click it will create a page in the Glossary that I
 can fill in.   I just need to be able to disable that functionality to keep
 e.g. spurious links from being generated when I want to use the literal
 page-name string instead of the link - if I format the string (e.g. as
 literal, bold, italic or whatever - that helps, but formatting is
 often lost, and the links re-generated.  Probably this is different topic,
 though.

 M$ Office AutoCorrect/AutoFormat leverages Undo for similar functionality:
 the autolinking/autoformating is added to the undo list as a separate action
 from the typing, so that you can just type and press Ctrl+Z to supress the
 autothings when your don't want them.

 Currently in zim they are fused: FooBarSPACE turns it into a link when
 you add the SPACE; Ctrl+Z removes the link but also the SPACE; pressing
 SPACE again to continue typing restores the link.

 So maybe we want to adopt the separately-undoable autolinking model?
 It doesn't solve other questions but it does give a one-press way to decide
 autolinking case-by-case.

 Correction: in perl zim it already worked the smart way!  In pyzim, the
actions are fused.
I'll file a feature request in the tracker for pyzim.

-- 
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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-22 Thread 0x0000
--- On Sun, 11/15/09, Beni Cherniavsky c...@users.sf.net wrote:

 From: Beni Cherniavsky c...@users.sf.net
 Subject: Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links
 To: Pedro pedro...@gmail.com
 Cc: Zim zim-wiki@lists.launchpad.net
 Date: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 11:31 PM
 On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 20:44, Pedro
 pedro...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
  DokuWiki for example has both options:
  [[Link Target]]  simple link
  [[Link Target|Click here]]   link with a
 label
 
  This is jsut a possibility, since zim comes with a a
  GUI rather than being markup-centered, all the links 
  could have the latest format, being up to the user to
  choose if any part of it should be automagically filled.
 
 Just to clarify: I was talking solely about user
 interface. For the purpose of this discussion, I don't care
 if the the underlying markup for 1:1 links is [[Link Target]] 
 or [[Link Target|Link Target]].
 (Generally, I do prefer the first format, so that the text
 files are easier to read and edit manually.)
 
 And I agree that there must be an option to make the label
 different from the target.  I described the text is the link
 model because it affords a more intuitive and fluent GUI, to 
 spark discussion about capturing its good qualities in a GUI 
 that does allow text to differ from the link.
 
 --
 Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin c...@users.sf.net
 

I think it should be a switch - a button on the toolbar that toggles the 
functionality on and off like the read-only toggle.   There should be a 
keystroke for it, too, of course.

I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time going back and removing 
GUI-generated links (in Zim) - more time doing that, in fact, than I would 
manually entering links to begin with.

What I would like to have (to do, perhaps) with the Zim GUI is what was 
suggested regarding a checkbox or radio button that will turn the auto-linking 
associated with CaML case on/off.  

I am working mostly with software development documentation and notes - 
/everything/ is CaML case - I don't mind having to hit ^L to make some text 
into a link.  

I would also Like the color coding of broken links tha was suggested, since my 
common workflow is - type in the literal links (this would be with the option 
mentioned above turned on), then make another pass through the text creating 
and editing links.

In addition to those points, I will add that in most cases the link generation 
in Zim is find - I like being able to type e.g. Glossary:TCP and get a link 
that - when I click it will create a page in the Glossary that I can fill in.   
I just need to be able to disable that functionality to keep e.g. spurious 
links from being generated when I want to use the literal page-name string 
instead of the link - if I format the string (e.g. as literal, bold, 
italic or whatever - that helps, but formatting is often lost, and the links 
re-generated.  Probably this is different topic, though.


0x



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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-22 Thread Dotan Cohen
 I think it should be a switch - a button on the toolbar that toggles the 
 functionality on and off like the read-only toggle.   There should be a 
 keystroke for it, too, of course.


This ssounds like the best solution. I personally would prefer that
there be no label for links: URLs are typed as they are, and Zim would
autmatically make them clickable links. But I understand that not
everyone would prefer that.


 I'm finding that I'm spending a lot of time going back and removing 
 GUI-generated links (in Zim) - more time doing that, in fact, than I would 
 manually entering links to begin with.


I agree, it is a terrible time waster.


 What I would like to have (to do, perhaps) with the Zim GUI is what was 
 suggested regarding a checkbox or radio button that will turn the 
 auto-linking associated with CaML case on/off.


Are you referring to internal links, or external links? I would
personally prefer that there be no support for internal links, as I
use CaMeL case for code variables and I store code examples in Zim. I
do not use internal linking in Zim.


 I am working mostly with software development documentation and notes - 
 /everything/ is CaML case - I don't mind having to hit ^L to make some text 
 into a link.


++agree


-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il

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Re: [Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-16 Thread Beni Cherniavsky
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 20:44, Pedro pedro...@gmail.com wrote:

 DokuWiki for example has both options:
 [[Link Target]]  simple link
 [[Link Target|Click here]]   link with a label

 This is jsut a possibility, since zim comes with a a GUI rather than
 being markup-centered, all the links could have the latest format,
 being up to the user to choose if any part of it should be
 automagically filled.

Just to clarify: I was talking solely about user interface.
For the purpose of this discussion, I don't care if the the underlying
markup for 1:1 links is [[Link Target]] or [[Link Target|Link
Target]].
(Generally, I do prefer the first format, so that the text files are
easier to read and edit manually.)

And I agree that there must be an option to make the label different
from the target.
I described the text is the link model because it affords a more
intuitive and fluent GUI, to spark discussion about capturing its good
qualities in a GUI that does allow text to differ from the link.

--
Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin c...@users.sf.net

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[Zim-wiki] 1:1 vs. piped links

2009-11-15 Thread Beni Cherniavsky
I started to comment to pyzim bug
304605https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/304605but I think it
warrants a wider discussion.

The bug refers to a specific situation: editing an existing link text
modifies the target, thus breaking the link.
But it reflects a wider usability/discoverability issue:
sometimes we want to keep target synced to text, sometimes we don't, and we
lack a good interface for both.

At the ends of the spectrum, I see 2 self-consistent, UI models:

The Text Is The Link:
* All links explicitly say where they point to.  Nothing is hidden.
* Link creation can be as simple as applying a link style to typed text.
* Link text can be directly edited to switch the link target.
* Downside: there is no way to beautify links to streamline reading.
* P.S. This model is easily extended to Tomboy-style autolinking.

The Text Is Just A Label:
* All links have text separate from target.  The user controls link
appearance.
* Turning text into a link requires a dialog for the target.
* Changing the text never updates the target.  Beautifying links is easy.
* Switching to a different target requires a dialog.

The first model is nice but insufficient for many users.
The second model is near-optimal when you do need the flexibility, but is
cumbersome if you don't.
Both can apply to external links (URL vs. label) as well as internal (page
name vs. label).

Currently pyzim is close to the second and that's annoying - you have to
type the same thing twice to create a link!

It's interesting to note that Gmail uses the second model (makes sense, mail
links are all external with ugly URL).
But their interface is more user-friendly than Zim's!
Also, they augment it by URL discovery (they automatically turn into 1:1
links).

Note that starting with 1:1 links and later beautifying them is a common
workflow.

I'm not sure how all this should be blended, but here are some tricks/ideas:

* Show broken links in red: this makes it obvious when you are
breaking/retargetting links.

* Don't even show text field in Link dialog, only target.
  This makes it clear that text is edited by directly editing the page.

* Have checkbox or radiobox in Link dialog to toggle 1:1 mode (default on).

* Show the 2 link modes in different colors.  E.g. blue/red for 1:1 links,
green for other links.

* While the editing cursor is on a link, it expands to also show the target,
e.g. [link|target].
  When the cursor leaves the link, it collapses and you see just the text in
blue.

* While the editing cursor is on a link, a tooltip-like mini-dialog hovers
beneath it.
  This is more discoverable and friendly, though less keyboard-friendly.
  Gmail does this.

* Consider Tomboy autolinking for creating links of the simple 1:1 kind?

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin c...@users.sf.net
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