paragraph tool

Hi list,

sorry about being quiet for a while. Attached is a new patch for the 
paragraph tool. For those who can't remember what I'm talking about: the 
tool is supposed to make it easier to change the spacing and formating of a 
paragraph in a TextShape by presenting visual controls for these 
properties.

Unfortunately I didn't have much spare time for this so progress has been 
very slow. I don't think this will change in the near future. You gotta be 
patient with me.

I did a major refactoring, fixed a few bugs, improved the design a lot and 
added some features. Hope you like it so far.

Greetings,
 Florian

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Re: Introduction

Hi list,

hello from me as well - I am Ellen, one of Neha's mentors.

We would like to publish the user research profiles in the KOffice  
wiki, but I'm not sure where to put them. Should we create sub  
sections for each application (e.g. KWord - Usability - User  
Research) or create an own section for usability?

Thanks,
Ellen

On 24.06.2008, at 16:46, Neha Pahwa wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> My name is Neha Pahwa and I am one of the student interns for the  
> Season of Usability 2008 projects. I am working with Celeste Lyn  
> Paul, Ellen Reitmayr and Boudewijn Remp to study the interaction  
> paradigm of the KOffice suite. We are currently focusing on four  
> applications of KOffice suite - KWord, Krita, Karbon, and KPresenter.
>
> To identify the goals and target users of KOffice, I have created  
> user research profiles for the four applications of KOffice suite.  
> My next step is to evaluate the KWord application (followed by the  
> rest of applications) along the user research pattern.
>
> I am looking for more feedback on these four applications of  
> KOffice from the team involved in making KOffice better. Please  

Re: paragraph tool

Hi Florian,

Neha - the summer intern working on KOffice usability - is currently  
reviewing KWord's palettes and text formatting options. As we do use  
the current development version it would be great if you could send  
us some screenshots of what you've changed.

Thanks,
Ellen

On 02.07.2008, at 13:02, Florian Merz wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> sorry about being quiet for a while. Attached is a new patch for the
> paragraph tool. For those who can't remember what I'm talking  
> about: the
> tool is supposed to make it easier to change the spacing and  
> formating of a
> paragraph in a TextShape by presenting visual controls for these
> properties.
>
> Unfortunately I didn't have much spare time for this so progress  
> has been
> very slow. I don't think this will change in the near future. You  
> gotta be
> patient with me.
>
> I did a major refactoring, fixed a few bugs, improved the design a  

Re: Introduction

On Thursday 03 July 2008, Ellen Reitmayr wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> hello from me as well - I am Ellen, one of Neha's mentors.
>
> We would like to publish the user research profiles in the KOffice
> wiki, but I'm not sure where to put them. Should we create sub
> sections for each application (e.g. KWord - Usability - User
> Research) or create an own section for usability?

I'd prefer a separate section for usability, I'd think that would make it 
easier to consult the profiles.

--

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi

Re: paragraph tool

Hi Ellen, hi Neha,

actually, I didn't change any of KWord's/KOffice's current behaviour, I just 
added a new KoTool to it, so no damage is done. Right now this is nothing 
more than an experiment. But I have to admit, if this works out I'd like to 
remove paragraph formating functionality from the default text tool in the 
long run. I'll create a short screencast to demonstrate the tool, so stay 
tuned.

Let me just give you a short braindump on the topic:
- Formating a text is a different task than writing a text. Before the times 
of desktop publishing there were two distinct professions for this, the 
author and the typesetter. One of the best things about LaTeX is exactly 
this separation, that's why I think we should have separate KoTools for 
this, too.
- People seem to have a hard time imagining what the text will look like if 
they change the paragraph formating settings in a dialog. I've seen people 
going back and forth between the document and the dialog to get the 
paragraph to look the way they want it to (and I've been doing it myself, 
too). Doing this visually should be far easier for them. The downside is 
that not everything can be done visually, so we almost certainly will still 
need some options in a dialog.

So these are the most important ideas that I wanted to realize. I know that 
there are quite a few challenges ahead including usability, visibility of 
the controls, accessibility and touchscreen users. But I'm confident that 
we will find a good solution for these problems.

Greetings,
 Florian

Re: paragraph tool

On Thursday 03 July 2008, Florian Merz wrote:
> Doing this visually should be far easier for them. The downside is
> that not everything can be done visually, so we almost certainly will still
> need some options in a dialog.
Or in a docker, in the tool options, with "real-time" formating adjustement ?

Since your patch is rather unintrusive (except for TextPlugin.cpp ;) is there 
a way to make a full plugin out of it, and be even less unintrusive ?) maybe 
it can be commited ? That would make it easier for other people to test it 
(especially for the non-dev crow who either use packages or kdesvn or don't 
necesseraly know how to apply a patch, but can give feedback about the tool).

--

-- 
Cyrille Berger

Re: paragraph tool

Hi Florian and all

I've bee working on the text tool dockers too. As you might have noticed I've 
committed code that allows more than one option docker per tool,

Locally I've used that to put the current tabs of the text tool into separate 
dockers. Well not quite, as I now only have a character docker and a 
paragraph docker. The style lists are incorporated in these two dockers.

Your tool could fit it in nicely with this, however there is one thing I don't 
agree with.

I'm not agreeing that paragraph formatting is not part of writing. Yes I too 
think latex is right in separating contents from layout, but that is not the 
same as not wanting to structure your document as you write it, so I think 
it's important to still have paragraph formating in the normal text tool.

On Thursday 03 July 2008 13:15:28 Florian Merz wrote:
> Hi Ellen, hi Neha,
>
> actually, I didn't change any of KWord's/KOffice's current behaviour, I
> just added a new KoTool to it, so no damage is done. Right now this is
> nothing more than an experiment. But I have to admit, if this works out I'd
> like to remove paragraph formating functionality from the default text tool
> in the long run. I'll create a short screencast to demonstrate the tool, so
> stay tuned.
>
> Let me just give you a short braindump on the topic:
> - Formating a text is a different task than writing a text. Before the
> times of desktop publishing there were two distinct professions for this,

Re: paragraph tool

On Wednesday 2. July 2008 13:02:53 Florian Merz wrote:
> I did a major refactoring, fixed a few bugs, improved the design a lot and
> added some features. Hope you like it so far.

I love the concept!

I don't have a lot of time currently so I'm limited to just the end results 
(it compiles! It doesn't crash! :)

So I'm committing and hope to give some more useful feedback soon.

Thanks for your patch!
--

-- 
Thomas Zander

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Re: paragraph tool

On Thursday 3. July 2008 13:41:06 C. Boemann wrote:
> Hi Florian and all
>
> I've bee working on the text tool dockers too. As you might have noticed
> I've committed code that allows more than one option docker per tool,

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask why you think that's a good idea.
Specifically since we already discussed this and everyone on #koffice 
disagreed that it would be useful.  So why did you commit anyway, did you 
make a big change since?

> Locally I've used that to put the current tabs of the text tool into
> separate dockers. Well not quite, as I now only have a character docker and
> a paragraph docker. The style lists are incorporated in these two dockers.

Separate from that, some other devs have been working on fixing some issues 
with the same docker, based on the same IRC discussions :)

> Your tool could fit it in nicely with this, however there is one thing I
> don't agree with.

Its a different tool, not a different tool-options tab on the default text 
tool.  So I don't really see your point...

> I'm not agreeing that paragraph formatting is not part of writing. Yes I
> too think latex is right in separating contents from layout, but that is
> not the same as not wanting to structure your document as you write it, so
> I think it's important to still have paragraph formating in the normal text
> tool.

Re: paragraph tool

> Hi Florian and all

Hi Casper,

> I've bee working on the text tool dockers too. As you might have noticed
> I've committed code that allows more than one option docker per tool,

To be honest, I didn't notice :D

> Locally I've used that to put the current tabs of the text tool into
> separate dockers. Well not quite, as I now only have a character docker
> and a paragraph docker. The style lists are incorporated in these two
> dockers.

Sounds good.

> Your tool could fit it in nicely with this, however there is one thing I
> don't agree with.
>
> I'm not agreeing that paragraph formatting is not part of writing. Yes I
> too think latex is right in separating contents from layout, but that is
> not the same as not wanting to structure your document as you write it,
> so I think it's important to still have paragraph formating in the normal
> text tool.

I'm sorry if I wasn't completely clear on this. Yes, structuring the 
document is a part of writing the document. So we need to provide a way for 
the user to tell KWord that a paragraph is a headline in the text tool. But 
I don't think the text tool is the right place to define what a headline 
looks like or what this particular headline looks like. Just like you can