Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
Helge Hafting wrote:
Again - default being "different" does not force us to use
a different UI for it. The word itself is different - I think that is
enough.
Then why are we all discussing this issue then ? ;-)
I see the smiley, but still:
It _is_ ok to stuff slightly different things into a set of radio buttons.
One might as well argue that "left" and "right" are different, and
therefore they should have a different UI?
Now that was extreme. Left, right and center are all alignments. So
they fit in a set of "alignment" radio buttons. Justification
is fundamentally different, it aligns to two margins instead of one,
and changes spacing unlike the others. So its UI must be different,
separating out everything, we'll get two levels of radio buttons:
o justified
o aligned
- o left
- o right
- center
This is what we get, if we insist that the UI must reflect each and
every conceptual difference. It gets clunky this way. :-/
There is nothing wrong with discussion of course. That way, we
avoid going to unnecessary extremes. I have yet to see a
design philosophy that works well when taken to extremes . . .
best of both worlds: one click for changing alignment and also one
click for resetting the alignment (which will also set the radio button
Clicking a "reset" button isn't more work. Still, it seem like an odd
way of doing this - pressing a reset button instead of simply
setting the alignment to "default". Default being "different" isn't
an argument for this arrangement - so why? It is confusing -
Confusing to you because you know LateX. I reckon that most users
won't see the similarity that you see.
You don't need LaTeX knowledge here. Just the knowledge that
the alignment can be set explicitly by you - or implicitly by
the paragraph layout.
The confusion over the pushbutton is not because of latex. It is over
what the pushbutton actually do. It is blindingly obvious that
yet another radio button gives you yet another mutually
exclusive choice. It is not as obvious that the pushbutton
do the same thing.
Perhaps this concept is though for some to understand too, but
unlike the old checkbox, it doesn't actually get in the way. So
it works for the expert, and is ok for the beginner too.
Also, I think it is in line with the LyX way: Leave formatting detail
to the machine - most of the time. It is clear that you can go back
to that again, when you have a "default" radio button.
This concept is in use many other places too. Take font selection,
for example. The choice "Default" gives you whatever the
current document style (or any \usepackage commands) set
up for you.
Helge Hafting
