Hi, WinHugs is now looking pretty good I think, a few things outstanding, but overall its quite good to use. Unfortunately the way its designed means that its quite hard to do some enhancements that I would very much like to make, which would be very cool. However, changing the way its designed in this case will also change its user interface quite substantially, so I thought i'd check with people first.
== The Proposed Change == Move from looking and acting like a console, to looking and acting like IRC. In the current behaviour you type on the console, in IRC you type in a window at the bottom, when you press enter your changes are reflected on the content area. For an example of the kind of design I mean see http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~miked/images/gyhe_sceengrab2.jpg (although obviously mine would be prettier :) ) == The advantages for the user == You can type a multiline input (maybe), some really cool features become possible (bracket matching, type information, syntax hilighting, perhaps even auto-complete) == The advantages for me == Currently the RTF window code is 20% of WinHugs, and its by far the most brittle bit (occasionally the text flies around teh window, and I have _no idea_ why). With this change, I can make it more like 3%, and all really simple stuff. It will also be faster. == The Question == Do users want to change their model of how to use WinHugs? I have used Gyhe a bit, and its perfectly useable, just less console like. I think I prefer the Console style by a small margin, but guess thats because of habit rather than anything else. And the improvements I could make, in my opinion, far outweight the change. What do other people think? Once I change, there is probably no going back... Thanks Neil _______________________________________________ Hugs-Users mailing list Hugs-Users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/hugs-users
