[Usability]Re: Viewpoints on conditional formatting, anyone?

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 10:38:48AM +0100, Laura Arlov wrote:
> I'm sure it can be done better. 
Agreed.
 
> THE IMPLICIT RANGE PROBLEM
> So: Make the range visible and editable for the user.
Hmm.  This is a common problem with XL's format dialogs.  The stock
dialog is the same way.  Validation has a kludgish extension to
    'apply these changes to all other cells with the same settings'

None of the other spreadsheets do any better on that problem.  I
tried to ameliorate it in gnumeric at least for validation by
merging the validation specs into the format dialog in an attempt to
make it clear how the validation specs are managed.  Conditional
formats are slightly trickier in that each condition applies to an
entire format.  How about a select all cells with the same format
button ?  Not pretty, but would at least give us a visual of things.

> If Format button in each, Delete button in each.
agreed.

> 
> so I don't think that a display field should do double-duty as a
> command button.
agreed.

> You might direct the user simply to format the sample text. Some
> people may prefer to use the shortcuts on the toolbars rather than
> opening the whole format dialog.  
Good idea, but is a bit beyond our reach technically just yet.  The
menu/toolbar infrastructure needs more work before we can support
it.  
 
> Ideally, I'd let the user choose from a drop down list displaying
> formated text with a few of the highly likely choices
...
> the final choice be Custom format
I'm not sure how much that will help.  We have something similar for
borders on the toolbar, and I have never used it.  Somehow the set
of defaults is never quite what I want.  With something as complex
as a full style spec the list seems likely to grow too fast to be
usable.  However it does high light on of the implementation issues.

    What types of formatting are permissible in conditions.

XL does not support changes that will change the size of the content
or that effect borders outside the cell (diagonals are ok I think).

Gnumeric can relax the condition somewhat and allow size changes,
but borders will still be taboo.  Things like protection and
validation would also be taboo because jsut contemplating the
semantics of what that means makes me queasy :-)

One layout concept I had considered was tacking a condition editor
at the top of the actual format dialog.  Then the dialog would edit
the main format by default or a user could add a condition (via some
sort of drop down) and edit the result using the dialog in place.
Couple that with the notion of calculated values for some attributes
at it seems like a nice evolution.