Re: [Usability] Text wrapping in gedit

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

Il giorno dom, 02/10/2005 alle 19.21 -0400, Eric Larson ha scritto:
> So, let's consider a user that has many files open and the wants some to
> wrap and others to not wrap. I think it is generally confusing to have
> options regarding creating a wrapping policy. It then makes more sense
> that when a user has a document open, if they turn wrapping off (say on
> a toolbar icon or in a menu (view -> wrap text)) then it is local to
> that file.

100 % agreed. That's what the bugreport is about. If we though that such
a menu item should affect all the documents we would have switched from
a toggle in the prefs dialog to the menu item a long time ago.

The issue is however another, so let's sum thing up.

- There needs to a way to turn word wrap off/on in general [If Joe uses
gedit to always deal with tables he doesn't want to toggle the menu item
every time]
- There should be a way to toggle it on off for a single document
without affecting the others [this is what it's now missing and it's
beeing requested]

How to make the two coexist? As I said I don't think keeping the toggle
for the 'default' behavior in the prefs dialog is a good idea: having
related toggles in two separate places is confusing. For instance a user
who wants to turn off wrapping for all docs is more likely to see the
menu item and once he has seen it I think he may end up just using it
for every document he opens instead of looking into the prefs dialog,
which may in turn lead to frustration ("Why the hell this damn thing
doesn't turn wrapping off for good!").


For completeness here are the things which I think are agreed on:
- word wrapping is and will remain on by default
- if we implement a per document setting, this will be persisted in the
metadata

>  The confusion then comes with the tabs, since it seems it
> should affect the program as a whole.

No I don't think this has anything to do with tabs: this is about
current document vs the next one you open, indipendently from the fact
that you open it in a tab or in a new window. Suppose there were no tabs
and there was the proposed menu item and the user turns word wrapping
off: word wrapping shuold be turned off just in the current document (we
agree on that). Now, how can he specify that he really wants to have it
off also when opening another document?


Paolo