John Levon wrote: > - what the biggest problems are with the current structure
Some statistics : first figure is the number of menu items, the second number the total menu + sub-menus + sub-sub-menus items LyX svn blank document with a table File : 17 ; 53 Edit : 17 ; 79 View : 19 ; 55 Insert : 26 ; 89 Navigate : 5 ; 11 Document : 6 ; 13 Tools : 6 Help : 13 Total menu + sub-menus = 319 items OOwriter File : 21 ; 56 Edition : 25 ; 33 View : 14 ; 38 Insert : 24 ; 56 Format : 19 ; 64 Table : 17 ; 36 Tools : 19 ; 63 Windows : 3 Help : 5 Total menu + sub-menus = 318 items Problems : 1) The number of items is very big. Do we have any room to grow ? Oowriter interface is a clone of the old Word interface that was considered a nightmare of complexity. There is somewhere an interesting blog on the Microsoft site about Office12, with different members of the Microsoft usability team explaining the problems of the old MsWord interface. 2) Our menu tree is not well balanced we have 25 % of the items in the Insert menu ; the biggest menus in OOwriter is around 20 % of the total. 3) There is IMHO useless complexity, like the 7 different preview formats. If we just drop everything except pdf with a simple parser that would run it through dvips -> ps2pdf if there is pstricks or powerdot in the preamble we magically eliminate 13 items with no lost functionality (except for DVI aficionados) 4) Mathematics is a big elephant with a gigantic bottom crushing everybody. I don't have Mathematica, neither Maple, I don't write formulas in Fraktur. Mathematicians should be able to turn on a mathematician module, like chemists a chemistry module, etc... but the core of LyX should be left generic. 5) There is some dead wood. Does Fax works anymore across platforms ? 6) The version control items are for geek. It should be done through macros and then every geek can choose its favorite version control system. > - why a new structure would help The Web is full of articles investigating how people navigate in a tree. It shows that if the tree is balanced with not too many levels and items are structured in a logical way, people find the good item quicker. > - the guiding principles behind the design of the new structure 1) Recreate a balanced tree by exploding the Insert menu 2) The Edit menu had become something very strange 3) Isolation of a Math menu starts the path towards Activity menus. > - what each of the main HIGs have to say about both the old and new > setup HIG will only help us for the File, Edit maybe View and Windows menus that are standardized. After that, it is up to us to find a good structure. Cheers, Charles
