Hi,
I'm the author of WdxInfoPacker.
The current gui has evolved through time according to my feelings / some users ideas : current version
I'm currently thinking of a complete redesign : a 2 month old idea
I'd like to collect ideas before going into this procedure.
Thanks
[Plugin : WdxInfoPacker] Gui redesign
Moderators: Hacker, petermad, Stefan2, white
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franck8244
- Power Member
- Posts: 704
- Joined: 2003-03-06, 17:37 UTC
- Location: Geneva...
[Plugin : WdxInfoPacker] Gui redesign
TC#88260 -
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theosdikaios
- Senior Member
- Posts: 228
- Joined: 2006-02-04, 13:02 UTC
Ehm, IMHO a dialog should not be to big. Plz keep in mind there are a lot of notebooks with a display resolution 1024*768 and some with only 800*600.
"Since there are many things which have never happened and never will happen,
and which nevertheless are clearly conceivable, and imply no contradiction,
how can one say they are absolutely impossible?" Leibniz
and which nevertheless are clearly conceivable, and imply no contradiction,
how can one say they are absolutely impossible?" Leibniz
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fenix_productions
- Power Member
- Posts: 1979
- Joined: 2005-08-07, 13:23 UTC
- Location: Poland
- Contact:
My proposals:
- tips should be available in additional non-modal window (save the space),
- RMB menu with parameters to choose could be good idea,
- might options be grouped similar to TC's options (list on the left)?
- or use extensible panels for it (something like button for "ForEachFile", click on it and panel will appear inside the form)
Nice idea could be to have grouped options list with check boxes.
Please, let me know if this is not clear for you. Maybe I will make some fake screenshots.
- tips should be available in additional non-modal window (save the space),
- RMB menu with parameters to choose could be good idea,
- might options be grouped similar to TC's options (list on the left)?
- or use extensible panels for it (something like button for "ForEachFile", click on it and panel will appear inside the form)
Nice idea could be to have grouped options list with check boxes.
Please, let me know if this is not clear for you. Maybe I will make some fake screenshots.
"When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose." Facebook...
#128099
#128099
Introduce layouts
The first thing that comes to my mind is that schemes currently includes both the content and the file format definition.
My suggestion would be to introduce layouts. You could provide some template layouts like HTML, XML, TXT and CSV. For HTML there should be an option to select a style sheet.
New schema definition
The way the three content areas (footer, body and header) are defined should be changed. I would suggest to have a new floating window which acts as a content provider. Everything that can be stored inside the target file can be found here and added to a certain content area. These "content elements" are not just the fields from content plug-ins but also plain text or special things like line numbers. The three content areas can be found in the schema definition dialog.
It would be also good to throw away all those "special chars". Some of them are available as content plug-in field, some are just properties of content elements. All others should be just human-readable content elements.
Content elements can be added using drag and drop or by pressing one of the add buttons. See the linked dialog below. It also has two add buttons. In this case one button would add the content element to the end of the content area and the other adds it after the currently selected content element in the scheme dialog.
In the scheme definition dialog there should be a button to toggle display of the content provider dialog. One for each content area.
The added content elements in the scheme dialog could be represented as a set of draggable buttons or a header control or another "row" control providing drag and drop support.
The whole import column mechanism is also just another way to add content elements to one of the content area. For this reason it should be added to the content provider dialog. The main difference is that it's not just a single content element but multiple. There could be an extra dialog which pops up when adding a set of columns to the scheme dialog which allows the user to add all or just some of the content elements.
Each content element in the content area should be a selectable element so it can be edited or deleted easily. When a content element is selected options like aligning are available.
You should also consider that it depends on the file type which content areas HTML and XML supports header and footers while others don't. The same applies to the element options. Aligning cannot be used in a CSV file.
The field selection could basically look like this. I drawed it during the TC 7 betatest and hope Ghisler will use it one day instead of the + button menu.
http://www.lefteous.de/tc/beta7/cp_selection.png
This is of course just the content plug-in field selection. The complete dialog would also contain all above mentioned content elements.
Some smaller things
- The scheme definition dialog should be a subdialog of the scheme selection dialog.
- Language can be detected automatically.
- The language file information is not so important to see it on the first dialog.
- The remember last schema option can be removed and should be always activated.
- Let users create scheme definitions. So far they can only edit an existing and rename it. Add new and rename buttons to the schema selection dialog.
- The "check if schema already exists option" can be removed. Just don't allow to create a scheme definition with the same name.
- Create a real help button not a label.
- The selection for content plug-in locations can be removed. I know you have another opinion about this.
- It's ok that a user can pick the filename which contains columns to import but the default should be current file used by TC.
- Please display content plug-in fields in the same way as TC does.
- A way to preview the result would be also nice. It could be based on dummy or real data.
If you think my larger and smaller ideas sound interesting I can try to draw some mock-ups.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that schemes currently includes both the content and the file format definition.
My suggestion would be to introduce layouts. You could provide some template layouts like HTML, XML, TXT and CSV. For HTML there should be an option to select a style sheet.
New schema definition
The way the three content areas (footer, body and header) are defined should be changed. I would suggest to have a new floating window which acts as a content provider. Everything that can be stored inside the target file can be found here and added to a certain content area. These "content elements" are not just the fields from content plug-ins but also plain text or special things like line numbers. The three content areas can be found in the schema definition dialog.
It would be also good to throw away all those "special chars". Some of them are available as content plug-in field, some are just properties of content elements. All others should be just human-readable content elements.
Content elements can be added using drag and drop or by pressing one of the add buttons. See the linked dialog below. It also has two add buttons. In this case one button would add the content element to the end of the content area and the other adds it after the currently selected content element in the scheme dialog.
In the scheme definition dialog there should be a button to toggle display of the content provider dialog. One for each content area.
The added content elements in the scheme dialog could be represented as a set of draggable buttons or a header control or another "row" control providing drag and drop support.
The whole import column mechanism is also just another way to add content elements to one of the content area. For this reason it should be added to the content provider dialog. The main difference is that it's not just a single content element but multiple. There could be an extra dialog which pops up when adding a set of columns to the scheme dialog which allows the user to add all or just some of the content elements.
Each content element in the content area should be a selectable element so it can be edited or deleted easily. When a content element is selected options like aligning are available.
You should also consider that it depends on the file type which content areas HTML and XML supports header and footers while others don't. The same applies to the element options. Aligning cannot be used in a CSV file.
The field selection could basically look like this. I drawed it during the TC 7 betatest and hope Ghisler will use it one day instead of the + button menu.
http://www.lefteous.de/tc/beta7/cp_selection.png
This is of course just the content plug-in field selection. The complete dialog would also contain all above mentioned content elements.
Some smaller things
- The scheme definition dialog should be a subdialog of the scheme selection dialog.
- Language can be detected automatically.
- The language file information is not so important to see it on the first dialog.
- The remember last schema option can be removed and should be always activated.
- Let users create scheme definitions. So far they can only edit an existing and rename it. Add new and rename buttons to the schema selection dialog.
- The "check if schema already exists option" can be removed. Just don't allow to create a scheme definition with the same name.
- Create a real help button not a label.
- The selection for content plug-in locations can be removed. I know you have another opinion about this.
- It's ok that a user can pick the filename which contains columns to import but the default should be current file used by TC.
- Please display content plug-in fields in the same way as TC does.
- A way to preview the result would be also nice. It could be based on dummy or real data.
If you think my larger and smaller ideas sound interesting I can try to draw some mock-ups.