[Usability]gedit line wrapping and keyboard navigation



Re: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107904

In gedit, the option to have line wrapping brings up an interesting
usability question. I wanted to try to get the list's comments.

The basic question is in such an application, should keyboard navigation
follow logical lines or visible lines? That is, say I've got a line that
is longer than the visible line length and so it wraps to the next line.
Line numbering in gEdit described logical lines, not visible lines, thus
line numbers skip over numbering the wrapped portion of my line. But
keyboard navigation follows visible lines, thus if I am at the first
character of line #45 and line #45 is wrapped, hitting the down arrow
takes me one visible line down, but I'm still on the logical line #45.

In the bug I brought up an example where the following of visible lines
is particularly annoying. Say I'm editing code and I have to change the
number of tab indents of a series of lines. I'm used to having a
repeated use of "down, left, tab" to insert an additional indent.
However with the down key following visible lines and not logical lines,
I have to consider whether hitting the down key has taken me to a new
logical line or kept me on the same one.

Anyways, comments? Thoughts?

-jag


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Joshua Adam Ginsberg	       Cellphone: 970.749.8530
Rice University '02	       Email: joshg myrealbox com
St. Mark's School of Texas '98
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a 
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor 
safety." - Benjamin Franklin
---------------------------------------------------------

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]