Re: [Usability] Text-editing widget

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 21:41 -0500, Stéphane Maniaci wrote:

> However, I'm currently working on a text-editing widget, that is a
> widget which preview the text you're going to insert in your document,
> but also shows you some cool options like a shadow, outline or inset,
> plus all the sub-options of those (width, blur of the shadow,
> etc...). Basically, that means a ClutterStage on the left (a canvas),
> and the whole make-your-text-pretty configuration thing on the left.

> [1] : http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/348/textwidget.png


Hi Stéphane!

Is it really necessary or in any way beneficial to have a dialog with
preview for inserting text instead of in-place editing?

Adding text to a presentation, I either want to
 * just click a text frame that's already on the slide because it's
defined in the template/master and just write (even better if it already
is focused), or
 * click and write to add a text element that will be as wide as the
text runs, or
* click-drag to create a text frame I can write in immediately.

Free running as opposed to framed text might be dispensable. If both
exist, you should be able to turn one into the other.

Basically, the first requirement is to get text in with least effort.
Followed by being able to style text, immediately followed by being able
to edit the style of groups of text at once.

If you allow shadows on both text and images, you should try to make the
controls uniform.
 * Image and text objects could have the same shadow controls.
 * There could be a shadow tool to add and control shadows for all
objects that can have one.
 * Shadows could be just one effect of several, where objects could have
an effect stack.


A central question to your project should be: how and where exactly do
you want to improve on Impress or Powerpoint?


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/