[Usability] Re: Text wrapping in gedit

[Roberto Piscitello <robepisc freemail it>]

Paolo Borelli <pborelli <at> katamail.com> writes:

> 
> Il giorno dom, 02/10/2005 alle 22.40 +0000, Roberto Piscitello ha
> scritto:
> <big snip>
> > I find your arguments quite interesting.
> > Maybe gedit should have two modes: normal mode and developer mode.
> 
> As already stated before I'd really like to avoid this kind of
> pie-in-the-sky discussion: personally I value usability a lot and I
> think it's possible to make a good text editor which suits users across
> a large spectrum of expertise an needs. Distinguishing users in two
> classes is IMHO simplistic.

Well, maybe I appeared a bit too radical, but I think that while we are now
speaking about a way to have a global and a per document setting for text
wrapping, tomorrow we could be discussing the _same_ issue for line numbering,
for example.
We are thinking of line wrapping fist because it is the most annoying, but also
line numbering should be on by default for source files and off by default for
normal files.
If the euristic solution prevails for line wrapping, then for line numbering,
then maybe for one or two other settings, gedit already assumes two faces,
depending on the type of files it is dealing with.
I haven't proposed nothing more groundbreaking than this. (well, that was the
intention, but I realize I probably pushed my idea a bit too far in the previous
post)


> Removing a few prefs from a dialog that the casual user is very unlikely
> to ever open and instead force him to chose between two apps or two
> modes sounds to me a lot like being a pacifist and move war to those who
> don't agree ;)
I agree, but I also think that power users too should be given, when possible,
the right defaults, without having to open the preferences, when they're doing
"power use" of gedit and partially different defaults when they're doing "normal
use".
The difference would be limited to _small_ details and adapting defaults, in
order not to cunfuse or annoy anybody.

Sorry for continuing this discussion, but I don't think it's that off topic.

Ciao,
  Roberto