Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 5:44:36 AM, Jean Jordaan wrote: [snip] > While I don't use a split view all the time, when I need it, I REALLY > need it.
It's not rare that I find myself using it when writing documentation in Word either. Also looking at the TODO reveals that someone else has already requested it too (unless that was me). And this all is really something when we are talking about a feature whose lack is not an absolute show stopper; users used to report only those, and maybe don't even realize when a new feature would make their work more convenient, not to mention writing an RFE. So maybe the idea that split view is not important should be revisited. Something that could *somewhat* make it less important is a bookmark feature (Add bookmark X and Go to bookmark X), but XXE doesn't have that either. Not out-of-the-box at least. It also certainly not good for the popularity of the product that out-of-the-box (yes, customization is important, but the default configuration should be as good as possible, especially as that gives the first impression about the product) it doesn't even have a navigation (kind of ToC) *parallel* with the normal view, so you can't just use that for somewhat redeeming the lack of the above mentioned features. (Switching between style sheets is slow, especially for big documents, so one has to customize XXE to have parallel ToC... and even then, that navigation view is quite awkward, as you have to select (double-click) the titles, not just move the caret there, and then switch the focus back to the parallel normal view, also, the ToC view takes screen place from the normal view, unless you constantly resize it back-and-forth, which is of course annoying). BTW, yet another navigation issue is that if I follow a link, I can't jump back (unless there was only one link in the document that pointed to the target), as XXE doesn't seem to remember from which point did I jump there, not even if the document wasn't modified at all since the clicking of the link. It should work like in modern Web browsers, as far as the XXE didn't lose the track due to too fundamental document modifications. To sum it up, I always thought that XXE could become significantly better for editing non-trivial documentations if it puts more focus on the navigation tasks. But currently, I believe, there is negative synergy coming from the lack of many common navigation features. I'm not sure that the XXE team realizes this, and that they do that with the proper weight. -- Best regards, Daniel Dekany
