Dear all, A couple of months back we discussed briefly some labelling and display issues with collapsed branches, which often makes them very hard to visually distinguish from one another. There seemed to be some consensus for the proposal below:
On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes
<lasgout...@lyx.org> wrote:
> Le 31/08/2015 10:49, Liviu Andronic a écrit :
>>>
>>> Wouldn't proper color instead of 'Branch:' work better? P
>>>
>> For me branches are already very clearly, visually distinguishable by
>> way of cross/checkbox icon preceding any branch inset; I don't know
>> any other inset doing this. Adding color would only help things.
>> Either way, 'Branch:' string is redundant IMO for collapsed branches.
>>
>> My proposal would be to:
>> - keep cross/checkbox icon
>> - (optionally) use color specific to branches
>> - include branch name ("someBranch") in inset label at all times,
>> whether collapsed or not
>> - followed up by any summary of the branch contents as we are doing now
>> - (optionally) for uncollapsed branches, keep 'Branch:' string as we
>> are doing now
>>
>> This will keep collapsed branches short, easily distinguishable from
>> other insets, and easily distinguishable among different branches.
>
>
> I agree with that. Note that color coding is never enough since some people
> have color-blindness issues.
>
And I would propose an even simpler solution:
- do away with the summary of the branch contents in all cases.
It's necessarily (too) short, doesn't always convey any useful info
about the contents of the branch (e.g. can be "..."), we don't do this
for other insets (e.g. Notes), a (longer) summary is always available
when hovering the collapsed branch, it can be woefully inconsistent in
practice. For an example of how things can look bad see attached LyX
file.
- when a branch is collapsed, always use this scheme to identify it:
cross/checksign followed by "Branch: someBranch" string; same as when
the branch is uncollapsed.
This provides a very consistent UI arrangement. And most of the times
the collapsed branches aren't excessively long. They tend to get
longer in master/child setups, but even so I believe branches tend to
be used in at least paragraph-long contexts, meaning that most of the
times such insets are alone on their own paragraph (some label length
isn't a big concern).
I have a document with a dozen branches, many of them collapsed...
Needless to say visually it's a mess. A more consistent display of
labels would be an improvement UI-wise.
Scott, any chance this could still make it into the next beta if there
is some consensus? This is definitely nothing critical, though.
Regards,
Liviu
> JMarc
>
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lyx-branch-collapse-issues.lyx
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