I think the problem is a bit larger then the word wrap pref. There are
more prefs that have this problem, for example, tabbing. Having to go
into the options to change the tab width because you happened to open a
python file is so annoying when you go back to a text file!
So how about comining the syntax highlighting tab with these
preferences. Basicly have it detected based on the type of file and that
should make it correct for 90% of the cases.
(there could even be two text modes, plain text, and 'unix text' which
wont have word wrapping, and tabs will expand to spaces, etc... and it
would be simple to change between these modes.)
This might also be better for the future new_mdi branch, so that when
you have an HTML document open to have a menu item that lets you see the
document in a browser, run some kind of command on a source file, or
some of the latex related commands when using a latex file (say updating
the bibtex files). This will stregnthen the idea that there is a bit of
a different behavior for different file types (which makes sense).
Look at the attached image for how jedit does it. Basicly combine that
with the syntax highlighting tab.
This might be too complicated, but might also just make it simpler. We
are talking about how gedit opens different files, not about different
prefs and how they show up twice, and why changing the word wrap in the
prefs dialog dosn't apply because the option is already set on the file
etc...
On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 17:28 +0000, Roberto Piscitello wrote:
> I post this message, after Paolo Borelli suggestion, to point you to bug #119428
> on gedit.
>
> The issue is about the text wrapping setting, which, being in the second tab of
> the preferences dialog, is difficult to reach and very annoying since it needs
> to be changed very often.
> This is a global setting, but it seems there is a consensus on the necessity to
> make it document specific.
> At first it was proposed to add a new document specific setting, in the form of
> a menu item: "View->Text Wrapping" and rename the one in the Preferences to make
> it clear that it is a default setting ("Enable Text Wrapping for newly opened
> documents").
> Then some other proposals came out... (...suspense :-)
>
> Here I paste some comments to that bug submission, and redirect you to bugzilla
> (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119428) for further informations:
>
> ==== From comment #8 (by me): ====
> Another, and cleaner, solution would be to get totally rid of the default
> setting in the preferences window and turn text wrapping on by default for each
> document not recognized as programming source code.
> If this euristic is wrong for a specific document, the user can always manually
> set/unset a text wrapping switch in the View menu for that document (and of
> course gedit would save this setting as document specific).
>
> The whole idea is based on the absolutely opinable constatation (because it
> comes from my personal experience and YMMV) that 90% of the times you want text
> to be wrapped unless it is a source file. We all hate horizontal scrolling:-)
> Maybe there are other file types which should not be wrapped by default. For
> example all setting files is /etc/* or with (or within a directory with) a name
> starting with a dot. I don't know.
> Or maybe this euristic would work only for me and is totally crap...
>
>
> ==== From comment #9 (by Paolo Borelli): ====
> The 'analitic' solution (set the default in the prefs and override it for each
> doc) is the more immediate approach, but I am somewhat doubtful that it offers a
> good user experience: having the same kind of setting in two places is
> confusing. For instance the casual user after seeing the menu item is even less
> likely to look for the same setting also in the prefs and will be frostrated by
> the inability to turn wrapping off for good.
>
> The euristic approach is much more interesting, but poses the obvius problem of
> how to handle the case where the user really wants something different.
>
> Another UI idea that came to my mind is the following:
> a submenu with
>
> - wrap on word boundaries
> - wrap on letter
> - disable wrap
> --------------
> - set current wrapping as default
>
> where the last item makes the current behavior the default.
>
> ====
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Roberto
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