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#61 AlphaCocoa preferences
Again, sorry for telling my most intimate wishes... I'm sure mot of this is not realistic, but maybe some ideas will be useful.
It took quite a long time for me to be used with the preference section of
AlphaCocoa. Before to forget how difficult it is to understand and
memorize this menu when you discover AlphaCocoa, I would give my experience
with encountering for the time that complex area of AlphaCocoa.
In the first place it's difficult to see the logic since "setup" and
"preference" are quite synonyms at first sight; moreover it does not seem to
be an opposition global vs non global since there is a "Global Preference"
inside the Preference entry. It was the first puzzling thinks for me, while
trying to understand the logic behind the organisation.
Things starts to be clearer when you understand that Menu... and
Feature... are considered as "extension" in a highly modular text editor.
It can take a while to understand that because neithers "Menu" nor
"Feature" are clearly extensions (It's not common to have Menu or features
as typical extensions, they could rather be parameters of a monolitic
program. "package", "extension", are more clear, but package is under
"Preferences" in "Package preferences"...).
Then, there is a third kind of beast, "Package", in the "Preferences"...
Not clear that the "Notes" feature, activated in Global Setup->Feature, can
be configured in Preference->Package preference, both in another place and
under another name (package)...
So, "Global Setup" is more precisely about activating/deactivating and
settings of packages. I think that "Extension" would be a better cover
term but there are already three of them ; "Package" is the more general.
So what about renamming "Global Setup" into "Packages"? It is the most informative thing: this is all about turning off and on a large set of optional packages. And moving
Preference->package preferences in Packages ? Package preferences are
already there, such as file mapping.
Preference->Global Preference could be put one level up in the hierarchy and called simply "Preferences...".
It will then adhere to most Cocoa Apps (and have the shortcut cmd-, affected to it).
The other sub-entries under the current "Preferences" entry could be under a new "Preference Tools" entry (for the gestion of preference files). For the color settings, it could be in a View menu entry, and for electric expension and completion, under an Edit menu, in my point of view.
Related
I agree that there are some inconsistencies both in the terminology and the general layout of the submenus in the application menu. I note for comparison that Text Wrangler has two items in its application menu called Preferences and Setup.
My suggestion would be to remove completely the Packages menu: its items may be dispatched elsewhere and some of them may be removed. Then, because its parallels the Global Setup menu, the Mode Prefs menu could be renamed as Mode Setup (and its Preferences… item as Mode Preferences…). Some submenus installed in the Preferences folder (like Electric Completions/Corrections/Expansions) do not really belong there and could be moved to the Text menu.
Concerning the fact that Menus and Features are extensions, I don't think that this is really relevant for the user. From the user's point of view, they really are menus and features which (s)he may want to activate or not. How these pieces of software are packaged should not be a concern. The corresponding items could be renamed as Select Menu and Select Features if this sounds more explicit.
Finally I agree that a key binding
Cmd-,should be made available to display a sort of dashboard to access the various kinds of preferences and settings. We already have such a grand central dialog in AlphaTcl: it is currently unused but will make an excellent starting point after some minor adaptations.I hadn't noticed even the "Package" Menu (Indeed it is rather "Package tools" than "Package") neither the existence of another "Preferences" item under "Mode Prefs"!
I think it is already clear that a "Preferences" item applies to a Mode when it is under "Mode Setup". The point, in my view, is having "Current Mode setup" rather than "Mode setup" alone, in order to help the user understand that it is a dynamic menu reflecting the current mode of the currently edited file.
I completely agree that "Some submenus installed in the Preferences folder (like Electric Completions/Corrections/Expansions) do not really belong there and could be moved to the Text menu."
I also agree with the fact that users are not interested in the details of the terminology neither in the point to know wether menus and features are "extensions" or "packages". However, I have the fealing that the the menu entry "Global Setup" do not state clearly that it is about turning on and off a set of extra functionnalities, whatever the name is. Setup is just as synonymous for preference (or maybe I'm wrong?). Why have two synonymous as two entries in a menu? "Select Menu" and "Select Features" don't help that much perhaps, it is the top-level "Global setup" item that would be clearer if if was something as "Select package" or "Select extention", ou "select functionality"... ?
While I don't wish to get embroiled in tinkering when so much substantive work remains to do on AlphaCocoa, I would like to disagree with the idea that "setup" is synonymous with "preferences." In my lexicon, setup is something I do once when first starting to use a product, but preferences is where I would go to tweak how that product works at any time. I feel that the current division (setup holding the settings to turn features on and off and preferences holding the settings to control how those features act) is very reasonable.
Best,
John
I agree. You can buy a car with or without air conditioning: this is a setup. Then if you've chosen the air conditioning option, you can set the air blower for instance on high, medium or low: this is a preference.
But I agree with the initial observation that much of the terminology is not as clear as it could be. This matters the more, the more complex an application is, which is of course the case for Alpha, doing a lot of things in a rather sophisticated manner, its strength BTW. Therefore thinking about using a clear terminology, always naming the same thing with the same term throughout and consistently would certainly be preferable. Not the least since the history of Alpha is so rich, that no surprise some inconsistent use of terms have entered the design. Moreover, since many of us are using Alpha since many year, we tend to overlook the idiosyncracies, only a newcomer notices and is rightly so irritated by. Thus I believe let’s profit from this moment. Only now we have an opportunity to rethink some of these things. Once AlphaCocoa is reaching its first ordinary release version, it will be too late for such reforms.
Cheers,
Andreas
ETH Zurich
Prof. em. Dr. Andreas Fischlin
Systems Ecology - Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics
CHN E 24
Universitaetstrasse 16
8092 Zurich
SWITZERLAND
andreas.fischlin@env.ethz.chandreas.fischlin@env.ethz.ch
www.sysecol.ethz.ch/Staff/afhttp://www.sysecol.ethz.ch/Staff/af
+41 44 633-6090 phone
+41 44 633-1136 fax
+41 79 595-4050 mobile
On 28/11/2016, at 19:27 , John uniquark@users.sf.netamp#117;amp#110;amp#105;amp#113;amp#117;amp#97;amp#114;amp#107;amp#64;amp#117;amp#115;amp#101;amp#114;amp#115;amp#46;amp#115;amp#102;amp#46;amp#110;amp#101;amp#116; wrote:
On Nov 28, 2016, at 5:01 AM, Sylvain Loiseau sylvainloiseau@users.sf.netsylvainloiseau@users.sf.net wrote:
I also agree with the fact that users are not interested in the details of the terminology neither in the point to know wether menus and features are "extensions" or "packages". However, I have the fealing that the the menu entry "Global Setup" do not state clearly that it is about turning on and off a set of extra functionnalities, whatever the name is. Setup is just as synonymous for preference (or maybe I'm wrong?). Why have two synonymous as two entries in a menu? "Select Menu" and "Select Features" don't help that much perhaps, it is the top-level "Global setup" item that would be clearer if if was something as "Select package" or "Select extention", ou "select functionality"... ?
While I don't wish to get embroiled in tinkering when so much substantive work remains to do on AlphaCocoa, I would like to disagree with the idea that "setup" is synonymous with "preferences." In my lexicon, setup is something I do once when first starting to use a product, but preferences is where I would go to tweak how that product works at any time. I feel that the current division (setup holding the settings to turn features on and off and preferences holding the settings to control how those features act) is very reasonable.
Best,
John
[tickets:#61]https://sourceforge.net/p/alphacocoa/tickets/61/ AlphaCocoa preferences
Status: fixed
Created: Wed Nov 23, 2016 03:17 PM UTC by Sylvain Loiseau
Last Updated: Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:51 AM UTC
Owner: nobody
Again, sorry for telling my most intimate wishes... I'm sure mot of this is not realistic, but maybe some ideas will be useful.
It took quite a long time for me to be used with the preference section of
AlphaCocoa. Before to forget how difficult it is to understand and
memorize this menu when you discover AlphaCocoa, I would give my experience
with encountering for the time that complex area of AlphaCocoa.
In the first place it's difficult to see the logic since "setup" and
"preference" are quite synonyms at first sight; moreover it does not seem to
be an opposition global vs non global since there is a "Global Preference"
inside the Preference entry. It was the first puzzling thinks for me, while
trying to understand the logic behind the organisation.
Things starts to be clearer when you understand that Menu... and
Feature... are considered as "extension" in a highly modular text editor.
It can take a while to understand that because neithers "Menu" nor
"Feature" are clearly extensions (It's not common to have Menu or features
as typical extensions, they could rather be parameters of a monolitic
program. "package", "extension", are more clear, but package is under
"Preferences" in "Package preferences"...).
Then, there is a third kind of beast, "Package", in the "Preferences"...
Not clear that the "Notes" feature, activated in Global Setup->Feature, can
be configured in Preference->Package preference, both in another place and
under another name (package)...
So, "Global Setup" is more precisely about activating/deactivating and
settings of packages. I think that "Extension" would be a better cover
term but there are already three of them ; "Package" is the more general.
So what about renamming "Global Setup" into "Packages"? It is the most informative thing: this is all about turning off and on a large set of optional packages. And moving
Preference->package preferences in Packages ? Package preferences are
already there, such as file mapping.
Preference->Global Preference could be put one level up in the hierarchy and called simply "Preferences...".
It will then adhere to most Cocoa Apps (and have the shortcut cmd-, affected to it).
The other sub-entries under the current "Preferences" entry could be under a new "Preference Tools" entry (for the gestion of preference files). For the color settings, it could be in a View menu entry, and for electric expension and completion, under an Edit menu, in my point of view.
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#61I have completely redesigned the AlphaCocoa application menu. It is more compact: there are now only three submenus called Preferences, Global Setup and Mode Setup. The others have been redispatched. There is also a
⌘-,binding which displays a general dashboard to access the various kinds of preferences and setups.Changes committed to the repository (rev. 1174 (sourceforge.net)).