On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, John Levon wrote: > On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 12:36:17PM +1000, Allan Rae wrote: > > > > Those of you who wish this option to remain, speak now or forever hold > > > your peace. With justifications, please ! > > > > The findings of such a survey would be more valid IMO if it were asked > > on the users list also (as you haven't cc'd that list and I'm no > > longer subscribed to it I'm assuming you didn't ask there for fear of > > finding out that some people actually use it). > > Contrary to what you seem to think, the existence of a user using an > option is not a reason in itself to keep it. I am not attempting to do a > survey, I am attempting to gather the rationale for its existence.
So asking people who use it why they use is a good start. A survey! > Asking people directly often causes complaints, when if you just /do/ > something, it won't. Observe the difference between not allowing > mouse-focussing of the minibuffer (5 bug reports so far I think ...) > and the 6 million other things that changed between 1.1.6 and 1.2.0, > which nobody has complained about, because it's just /right/ now. People everywhere are apathetic. They realise that the world changes from one bad day to the next and there's bugger all they can do about it and noone listens when they complain anyway. So why bother? "because it's just /right/ now" like the invasion of privacy by Carnivore or similar surveilance systems since September 11. Maybe it's just that most of those millions of changes cause a minor pain each instead of a big one and so were below the complaint threshold and we got lucky. [ Allan tried both and found a reason to keep it] > > So, I vote to keep this option because it makes creating multi-part > > docs like theses (which is one of the most common uses of LyX) > > straight forward. > > The real fix for this is a multi-part document outliner. So when a multi-part document outliner exists then we can reconsider removing the option. Outlining in general would be nice but we don't have this and it seems many people aren't interested in even considering it. > You must admit that without this option you have a simple work around, A fucked-up work around. Let's remove search-and-replace because we have a simple workaround for that too! And don't use that lame useability arguement to defend keeping search-and-replace because it just won't wash. That search-and-replace feature complicates the code too much and extends compile time too! And it uses boost::regex and we all hate that! > so you cannot use a usability argument like this in defence of keeping > the option, given that a) no other application does anything like this > (I suppose I am going to get told that emacs or something equally > screwed up does this) Just because Word does it doesn't make it right. Useability this and useability that... Different strokes for different folks -- hence vi and emacs. You already have it as the freaking default! Now you want world domination by annihilating your sworn enemies too! > b) it complicates the code Adding the name-when-you-save capability complicated the code. > c) it complicates the prefs Oh get real. One little check button is complicating the prefs? What a load of shite. > d) it complicates the menu handling (ellipsis or no ellipsis ?). > In particular we have had a /wrong/ menu text for the default > (off) for quite some time. So take the ellipsis off and leave if off see if I care. A user has to activate the name-when-I-create option anyway so they'll know they are going to get a dialog because that's what they just set their preference for. Duh. > All UID is a matter of trade-offs. I don't deny that for you, it might > be more convenient for you to type a name in up-front, but we must > counter that against the unnecessary UI complexity this brings. Breaking > consistency and conformity with other applications has to have a very > very good reason: I don't think the above counts. We have consistancy and conformity but also offer another way. Just get rid of the ellipsis and noone will be upset except GUI-fetishists and the anal-retentive menu mafia. > > > We should kill the pref and just not ask. > > > > How long is your kill list? Maybe we could deal with them in batches > > to speed up the process. > > Har-har. And yes, it's very very long (auto-region-delete anybody ?) This option seems less contraversial. Maybe you should have started with it instead. So which apps are included in your survey of "What features/capabilities/preferences are acceptable for LyX to offer?" Allan. (ARRae)
