Re: First UI component needing replacement.

[Ken Fox <kfox vulpes com>]

Dylan Griffiths wrote:
> Yes.  I tried to use the file dialog in XEmacs (haven't tried GNUEmacs)
> today, because he said he was taking these from Emacs.  I found them to be
> completely incomprehensible.

I *totally* agree. The XEmacs file dialogs are terrible. However, they
have a nice keyboard interface -- the keyboard interface was designed to
be used from a one-line region at the bottom of the screen. Most of the
time people use just use this. Auto-completion avoids typing and '?' shows
a temporary view of the current choices.

> ... plus we add the ability to alter the behaviour (such as the
> "advanced" file dialog a user can pick attributes on, building their own
> custom dialog when they know enough), we will cater to the advanced
> "anti-Mac" interface people, too.  I think this would put Gnome on the fore
> front of human interaction technology.  And That's A Good Thing (tm) :)

No. That would be avoiding making a decision and forcing the end-user to
be the human-computer interface designer.

> > I'd suggest a default of requested autocompletion. If it's off by
> > default users will never discover it, and I think many users would
> > like it.
> 
> That's what I had decided would be best, too, since I love being able to ask
> bash for help while drilling around the directories (yes, typing /usr/bin
> isn't hard, but /usr/doc contains menu interesting long, mixed case
> filenames :)).
> 
> The only problem is what keyboard shortcut to use, and how to advertise this
> to the user so that they will learn to use it, rather than happen upon it by
> accident.

I agree. Auto-completion should be *only* on request. (The system can
automatically provide hints/highlights in the file list, but the text field
should not be messed around with except on request.) As far as the training
issue goes, it doesn't seem unfair to expect people to read the documentation
to learn about advanced features. (This is such a simple feature, the
documentation could be in a tool-tip window that pops up over the file list
when an auto-completion choice is available.)

If people don't like <space> and all the reasonable <tab> combinations are
taken, what if we use <shift><space> or <control><space>?

- Ken