Re: Editing and formatting characters

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Thu, Nov 16, 2000 at 05:43:50PM -0800, Brian Stell wrote:
 
> Making it as easy as possible for the novice is always a good
> goal. However I wonder if a novice user editing a document with
> hidden formatting controls is not going to be be confused regardless
> of where one puts the cursor. Imagine what a "bizarre" behavior the
> novice will experience when they delete a [PDF] as a side effect of
> what they thought was a simple character delete.

Agreed.
Thay is why we are discussing on how to implement editing so that does NOT
happen.

> Would a cursor change when next to a hidden character be useful?

The meaning of such change in shape won't be very obvious.

> Would displaying the "hidden" character when it is next to the cursor
> be useful? Perhaps as a bubble?

No.
There would be a mode to show all formatting codes, in invisible mode it
must be invisible.

Think as it the same way as using bold, italics, font family, size, etc
in a word processor. Do you think users of word processors would like to have
visible tags for each of such things? the cursor changing its shape, or having
to press the arrow keys several times etc?

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

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