Re: [Usability] Text wrapping in gedit

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 20:20 +0200, Paolo Borelli wrote:
> Il giorno dom, 02/10/2005 alle 13.58 -0400, Eric Larson ha scritto:
> > I may be taking this question the wrong way but to me it indicates an
> > issue that has little to do with preferences and more to do with
> > purpose. I am sure others have argued this before, so I won't say much,
> > but the question comes to mind as to what the purpose of gedit really
> > is. It seems there is a movement towards a source code editor, which in
> > my view eventually evolves to an IDE. My impression that gedit fills the
> > notepad type of application more so than a generic text editor that is
> > meant to handle many kinds of programming. With that said, it seems like
> > there should then be two versions of gedit. Possibly a simple, "gedit"
> > application (word wrap on by default) that is for editing/viewing text
> > like notepad does. Another might be "geditor" (probably not that name of
> > course) that could be more extensible and handle things like multiple
> > wrapping guidelines. I say this because I don't believe the preference
> > has as much impact on the usability as does the lack of focus when it
> > comes to purpose. Just my two cents and I apologize in advanced if this
> > is inflammatory. I do hope it helps. 
> 
> 
> Please please please. This is the exact kind of pointless discussion
> that I wanted to avoid when I expressed my concern to Roberto about the
> utility of bringing up the isssue on usability list.

Again, I do apologize for being inflammatory. I left a comment on
bugzilla regarding the issue. I think wrap by default and keep the
preference hidden. Most folks don't want to side scroll. If we assume
they are not using gedit as an IDE, then offering an option to switch or
allow the creation of some sort of policy regarding what types of files
will wrap or not wrap, merely offers room for confusion. In this
scenario, we are mostly likely just confusing users who are mostly
likely already dealing with something that is unintuitive (ie editing a
text file such as a configuration file). 

Again, I apologize for bringing up the focus issue. My thought was that
if they had larger goals it might be worth the time thinking about
creating a programming editor based on gedit and leaving gedit proper a
bit simpler. It seems that would be more fun to the gedit folks if they
are interested in moving in that direction. That way they could create
slick features and keep doing amazing things without potentially making
the default gnome editor less usable. It sounds like that is not what
they want to do so I will leave it at that. 

Eric