On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 04:16:30PM +0300, Marko Vendelin wrote:
> I would like to bring up one more example where emacs clearly outshines
> LyX. Namely, if you try to insert citation in emacs (reftex mode) you are
> asked for regular expression, presented with the list of matching items
> and your new citation is in the text. If you want to remove citation ...
> just use Backspace key. If you want to add new citation to the list of
> citations ... regular expression, list, select. Finally, and I think it is
> very important, all these operations do not require any dialog boxen and
> you may even sell your mouse if the emacs is the only program you use :).
> On contrary, when you try to add new citation to the citation list in LyX,
> (1) you have to trigger somehow the citation box (I know only how to do it
> with mouse), (2) find a new dialog box in your screen and move there with
> your mouse, (3) dig into the huge list of the items (you're lucky if you
> use Gnome frontend since you can search for items :) ), (4) press a button
> in the dialog to add citation. If you want to remove the citation from the
> list, then again you have to go through the dialog box. The same (almost)
> holds for insertion of references, url, index ...
A good GUI dialog should allow you to use it only with the keyboard.
A good example is the xforms Reference dialog:
M-i r to open the dialog
up/down to select a label from the browser
enter to close the browser
You should make the gnome dialogs behave the same.
A bad example is the xforms Citation dialog:
After opening the dialog, pressing up/down has not effect. You need to
select the "bibliography keys" browser with the mouse, and only then you
can use the up/down keys.
(Why is this happening? Is this because there are two browsers in this dialog?
can it be fixed?)
Moreover, after you select the key from the browser, you can add it to
the inset keys list only with the mouse (this should be easy to fix).
For comparison, this is the behavior of the kde dialogs:
Reference dialog: The first time it is opened, pressing up/down has no effect,
so you need to press tab once to select the browser (or whatever name it is
called by qt/kde), and then you can use the up/down keys.
The next times you open the dialog, the browser is already selected.
(Can the browser be selected the first time the dialog is opened?)
It is closed by M-o (can it be changed to enter ?)
Citation dialog: The first time it is opened, neither browser is selected.
To select the "bibliography keys" browser you need to press tab twice.
It remains selected the next times you open the dialog.
Furthermore, you can add a key to the inset keys list with the keyboard (M-a).
