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------- Additional comments from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 30 06:45:45 +0000 2007 ------- For clarification, my previous post, #desc76, was mostly a discussion of how MS Word XP behaves. As I remember, MS Word 2000 behaved the same way. barryii said: [...] scottydm wrote: "When editing an existing paragraph, you can set your cursor at the beginning of a line, just in front of the first character. However, you cannot set your cursor at the end of a line after the final space on that line." I think it should be allowed. Let's take advantage of every easy improvement over MS Word that we could make that has no bad side. The first place I'd think of to put the cursor if I want to delete the last character of a line is at the end of the line. Having the cursor jump down to the beginning of the following line if someone tries to put their cursor at the end of the previous line (I don't know whether MS Word does that) is OK because the letter would be inserted down there anyway, but with spaces it would be weird, as you said. It breaks WYSIWYG. [...] I didn't say it broke WYSIWYG, I said some people may find it weird. If you think about it, it makes sense. Here's the deal: You have a long string of text, words with spaces. This string is too long to fit within the text area so the word processor word-wraps the string so that it takes two lines. Click on the string somewhere to insert the cursor and use the left/right arrow keys to move the cursor along the line. When you get to the word-wrap place, where do you *show* the cursor? Should it be at the beginning of the second line or the end of the first line? That's the essence of it. Logically there is one place, but visually there are two. MS Word happens to always put the cursor at the beginning of the second line. If you think about deeply about it, attempting to create a system where you can visually have the cursor in either location creates a pile of weird paradoxes. The good news is, pick one place or pick the other place, either one is correct. barryii said: [...] scottydm wrote: "2nd line of 1st paragraph has a whole bunch of spaces, but they are not all visible because some have "fallen off" the edge of the "paper"; if you happen to put your cursor out there (using the arrow keys) the cursor is not visible either" It's kind of like MS Word is in viewer mode by default and OO Writer is in edit mode by default (with OO Writer not showing images, etc). I'm more of an MS Word person, but I also like to know exactly what's happening to the document I'm editing and where it's happening. If the cursor is going to "fall off" like that, then at least have some information in the toolbar about where the cursor is. I'd prefer the information in the margin, on the line of the cursor, whether or not "show nonprinting characters" is on. Remove the information when the cursor gets out of the invisible area. [...] That's a good idea. It is extra visual widgets though. This is a real problem with MS Word and the vanishing cursor. Another approach would be to give the user a horizontal scroll bar when this happens and show the spaces and cursor out in the (now very wide) gray area. redi2go said: [...] In the meanwhile, I wonder whether this approach isn’t over-complicating the matter? My assumption was always that the margin is inviolate. When I hit it, it’s a brick wall and I have to start again at the next line. This is surely what the naïve user would expect? To add to that I would say that having space characters in the margin, and even worse, invisible space characters in the limbo of the ‘grey area’ is another fundamental breakdown in wysiwyg. How are you supposed to edit them? [...] I think "nonprinting character" is a misnomer. We should call them "characters that don't take any ink when you print them out", except that's long and sort of dumb sounding (but true). The margin is inviolate in that you can't put any ink there. Characters which don't use ink are: space (in topography they come in several widths), return (hard and soft), tab, the non-breaking space, the vertical tab (not quite sure what that is in terms of a word processing document), and page and column breaks. There are probably others. Now the non-breaking space contains mojo because you are to treat it like an ordinary inky character, and as an ordinary inky character you may not put one in the margins. If I justify both sides of my text, I want my inky letters snuggled up against the margins. I do not want to see any gaps between between the printed words and the margins. Nor do I want to see any ink in the margins. Therefore, I must allow at least one space in the margin... and I must allow the pilcrow in the margin (hard return)... and I must allow the cursor in the margin so I may edit the non-inky characters who live there. MS Word does exactly this, and WordPerfect does this too (to a degree). The question has become, how many non-inky characters do we let into the margin (one of several questions, but this is the basic one). Let's talk spaces because they are the universal non-inky character. WordPerfect will allow two (normally). Then it will snap down to the next line and if you keep inserting spaces it will put them on the next line -- unless you do some fancy key strokes, or move your cursor up to the previous line and insert spaces before your spaces. It's complex and nonintuitive. The word processor sometimes does stuff you don't necessarily expect it to do. MS Word lets you put as many spaces as you want into the margin. In fact, it refuses to let you put them at the beginning of the line *unless* you stick in some sort of return first. I only tried sticking in 40 or so, and I don't know if there is a limit. MS Word even shows you those spaces (normally) and you can move your cursor around the margin and delete or add more spaces. However, as barryii pointed out, not showing the spaces in the gray area (off the edge of the page) means you can "lose" your cursor out there, and that's not cool. However, the MS method is dead simple and very easy to understand: The cursor does not snap down to the next line unless you type in an inky character OR you tell it to go there by typing in a return (hard or soft). There never a mystery about when it will snap because you control when it snaps. OO Write hides the spaces (the whole point of this bug report) and as hidden spaces you can put in gobs and gobs of them. They don't seem to live anywhere. They are there, but they are not there. Like MS Word this is simple because there is no mystery about when the cursor will snap to the new line -- it does so when you tell it to do so. The problem is that you can't see these spaces so you can't edit them other than to blindly pick away at them with backspace or delete (or, for the perverse, pile in more spaces). Back in the day of the Underwood, http://www.typewritermuseum.org/collection/index.php3?machine=underwood5&cat=kf the user had to think about content AND presentation at the same time. It was a mechanical process. If you wanted your first line to start one-inch down the page, you had to manually insert paper then roll it up one inch before you started typing. And heaven help the poor user who had to insert a long word in the middle of a paragraph! We have computers now, but a TEXT EDITOR is still a very mechanical experience. To indent the first line of a paragraph, hit the space bar five times; to put extra spaces between paragraphs, hit the return key twice; etc. To truly disconnect the content from the presentation, use a WORD PROCESSOR. OO Write is a word processor. Users should not be mucking about with strings of spaces to try to tweak the look (presentation) of their document. That's why they're using a word processor, or it should be why they're using a word processor. Hopefully no one using OO Write is building tables with hyphens, vertical bars, and strings of spaces (as you'd be forced to do in a text editor), they should know enough to insert a table. Likewise with other nits of presentation -- learn to use the formatting and styles tools. Now some users are in the habit of typing two spaces at the end of each sentence. They were taught to do that (despite the fact it's a very "Underwood" sort of thing to do), and some will defend the practice. Other users are converting old text documents and they will have strings of spaces to deal with. And still others are confused by OO Write and slip an extra space in here and there. So while the ideal is no more than one space at a time, the reality is that sometimes spaces come in packs, flocks, herds, and occasionally swarms. So with that in mind -- redi2go said: [...] I would do it like this: 1: the cursor is at the end of the line ie against the margin, after typing a space. a) the next character is non-space: move to the next line, and show the non-space b) the next character is a space: move to the next line, and show the space. 2: the cursor is at the end of the line after typing a non-space a) the next character is non-space: restart the whole word on the next line, leaving the last space dangling on this line. If the word is longer than the line, just split it before this character. b) the next character is space: leave it dangling at the end of the line and move the cursor to the start of the next line. If in the 1b case the user continues typing spaces, you continue showing them - just as many as he wants. I can't see any good reason to do otherwise, and all the alternatives I can see ultimately result in a wysiwyg failure. [...] #1b: This violates the word processor paradigm; it encourages and/or forces the user to think about presentation issues; it mucks things up for those who insist on typing two spaces after each sentence; and it is different behavior than MS Word, OO Write, and even WordPerfect; which will change the appearance of older documents or imported documents. #2b: Are you saying to put the space in the margin? Assuming so, then do not move the cursor until the user types an inky character or a return (hard or soft). Final paragraph: Putting non-inky characters in the margin in no way breaks the WYSIWYG paradigm. Just show them there and allow editing. Overall: Some of what you propose is text editor behavior. If someone wants the behavior of a text editor then they use a text editor. OO Write, or any word processor, is the wrong tool for them. redi2go said: [...] On a couple of other points raised: - justification: here I think the basic principle is that all leading and trailing spaces are hidden - they should take no part in the calculation. Similarly with centred text. [Ditto] [...] "Hidden" is exactly the sort of behavior we are trying to solve with this issue report. I hope you meant "ignored". Show the spaces, but ignore them when calculating where to put the words on the line. However, this is a special case. Creating a paragraph indent by typing spaces or hitting tab is a mechanical and archaic way to solve a presentation issue. It's wrong, but it's not a mistake. Now a web browser will ignore leading spaces and tabs, but MS Word and OO Write do not. It's one of the differences between the web paradigm and the word processor paradigm. It's ugly, but I say pay attention to the leading whitespace and ignore the trailing whitespace. Scotty --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
