Re: [xwiki-devs] [xwiki-users] [VOTE] Creating complex lists with the new WYSIWYG editor - xwiki-devs@xwiki.org

15 May 2009

Hi Niels,
thanks for your feedback.

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:03 AM, Niels Mayer &lt;nielsmayer(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

...
  On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Marius Dumitru Florea
<
 mariusdumitru.florea(a)xwiki.com&gt; wrote:

 For the first outcome I think we all agree that the user has to press
 Shift+Enter. For the second and third outcomes I see two options:

 A) Enter for 2 and CTRL/META+Enter for 3
 B) Enter for 3 and CTRL/META+Enter for 2
 (if you see any other options please step up)

 Sounds like wikimacs (wiki+emacs) :-)

 What about using a multiple-repeated enters. Kind of like a keyboard
 equivalent of a double, triple click, with some visual way of suggesting
 what level "upwards" in the DOM the return will create the next element
 (e.g
 a "box insertion caret" like for drag-drop operations):

 * a single enter in a list adds a paragraph or <br> within the current
 element. It does not create a new list or table entry.

 * double-enter, creates a new <li> <tr> etc (depending on if you're in a
 table, list etc) within the current table/list.

 * triple-enter, creates a new <li> <tr> <p> or <br>  as the next
element
 outside of the current list/table etc. (if in a nested table/list, it'll
 correctly add the next element) 

We tried doing something similar for paragraphs (hit enter once to create
next line, twice for new paragraph) and the feedback we got from users was
pretty negative. It looks like the user's expectation about the enter key is
that it will create a new item (new paragraph, new list item, new whatever).
Thus the concept of double-enter similar to double-clicking doesn't seem to
work in practice so far. Thus I think we shouldn't reintroduce it.

-- Niels
...
  http://nielsmayer.com

 PS: I got to deal with all these fun issues back in ~1995 when i designed
 WWWeasel (reviewed at an early WWW conf
 here<http://nielsmayer.com/L27933-1529TMP.pdf>
 )
 http://nielsmayer.com/wwweasel/node26.html<
 http://nielsmayer.com/wwweasel/node26.html#SECTION00051000000000000000>
 http://nielsmayer.com/wwweasel/node27.html
 It is very helpful for the user to be able to see what's going on
 "structurally" at the same time as you're editing in WYSIWYG.... If you
can
 graphically depict where in the DOM structure the "return" is pointing, at
 what level of scope, then it's a lot less confusing to the user. 

The WYSIWYM concept is pretty interesting and powerful. I played around with
tools such as WYMeditor
http://files.wymeditor.org/wymeditor/trunk/src/examples/01-basic.html
and I definitely do like the concept. However, this is not the direction we
have taken so far with our new WYSIWYG editor. Changing it to make it a
WYSIWYM editor on top of what it currently does would require considerable
effort. Our focus right now is on eliminating quirks and bugs in all major
browsers to make the editor ready for production use. Therefore I think
we'll have to wait some time before even considering building a WYSIWYM
editor for XWiki.

However, please note that since you can store XWiki document contents as
XML, you could definitely try to plug WYMeditor on top of XWiki and make it
the default edition option. You'd lack the wiki-specific feature, but for
content insertion you'd benefit from the WYSIWYM interface :-)

Guillaume

...
  _______________________________________________
 users mailing list
 users(a)xwiki.org
 http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users

-- 
Guillaume Lerouge
Product Manager - XWiki
Skype ID : wikibc
http://guillaumelerouge.com/