[Usability] Re: Text wrapping in gedit

[Roberto Piscitello <robepisc freemail it>]

I reply here to comment #10 on bug #119428
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119428#c10), since Eric doesn't seem
to be in the CC for that bug and since the discussion is no more related to that
bug.

==== Quote of your comment: ====
I think this bug speaks to the fact that the focus of gedit is confusing. I am
not saying this is bad, but it might be time to consider what the purpose of
gedit really is. If a developer is using gedit as his/her editor, then it seems
obvious to allow a document specific wrapping policy to be set. Along the same
vein, plugin systems and source code type policies should also be set as well.
With that said, for the person who just wants to edit a file because some
website said that they needed to do 'sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf' and change
line xx, we are just confusing them. I don't see a way to get around this
problem because it makes gedit a sub par editor for each use case, which I would
argue, are not corner cases or rare.
====

I find your arguments quite interesting.
Maybe gedit should have two modes: normal mode and developer mode.
If the user open a source file, a script or a setting file (/etc/*, ~/.*), gedit
should automatically enter developer mode. Default to normal mode otherwise.
An easy way to manually switch the mode should be present in the menu and the
toolbar.  If a manual switch is performed by the user when opening a file, that
setting should be remembered for that file.
In the usual case, however, the choice would be automatic (and correct, one
hopes:-).

Developer mode specific features:
 - syntax highliting (*)
 - line numbering (*)
 - matching bracket highlighting (*)
 - go to line
 - text wrapping off by default
 - availability of some plugins (for example: tag-list)

(*) always on; the corrispective preference switches should be removed.

Normal mode specific features:
 - spell checking
 - text wrapping on by default
 - tab spacing = 8 (non modificable?)
 - tab sostitution with spaces (non modificable?)
 - interruptable pages (I'll post a feature request about that)
 - availability of some plugins (for example: spell-checking)

Menu items would be more or less identical in the two modes.

This way at least one half of the options in the preference dialog could be
removed or set in stone with sane defaults (leaving them as hidden gconf keys).

Of course this vision doesn't represent what gedit developers think.
Oh well, what do you think, gedit developers? Usability guys?

TIA,
  Roberto