Below.
Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
2) The existence of a style attribute does not affect how and where I
can select text
This is a con for me. I want to select the whole charstyle
automatically and not bother with micro selection.
I am abivalent on this one. When a character style is a noun, for
example, I like the fact that selection goes in one glob. After all,
one nice thing about selection in word is the way it selects full
words when it feels it should (I think it is one of the few automatic
things they got right).
OTOH, when it comes to setting large parts of text in a charstyle (and
assuming the we have the 3-box model), then I do not think this is
still the case. Assuming an example like what Helge proposed:
\emph{Sentence 1. Sentence 2.} Sentence 3.
I expect that I should be able to select sentences 2 and 3 to cut and
paste them. The block model is not as good for long text as for short
one.
Thinking about this, and actually using (as opposed to developing) LyX
for the past few days, I've come to a kind of compromise position. I
think my own view on this depends very much on just how "semantic"
something feels, and I think JMarc's comments here reflect the same
point of view. I don't think I want to lose \emph in the way it now
functions. Of course \emph has some sort of meaning---linguistically, it
amounts to focus, more or less---but it's meaning is very unspecific,
and one can use emphasis for all kinds of reasons. And you might
emphasize whole sentences, etc. So you don't have the kind of division
between emphasized text and the surrounding text that argues for special
deletion and selection behavior. And I think this is a reflection of the
fact that, while \emph is in some sense "semantic", it is at best
minimally so. It doesn't really have a meaning of its own. Rather, each
use of emphasis has some significance, and there's some sort of vague
relation between the different significances, but that's about it.
On the other hand, noun, or code, or url---now those are really
semantic, and the charstyle-as-inset behavior seems entirely appropriate
for them. Those are cases in which the text really functions as a unit,
and I will generally want to select them as units, delete them as units,
move over them as units if I don't want to move into them, and so forth.
They're also cases in which you're generally dealing with small chunks.
So, in that sense, I think the current behavior of 1.6.svn is pretty
much correct. I'd be reluctant to lose \emph in its current form---at
least until other issues, like selection behavior and line breaking,
were resolved, in which case it doesn't matter as much. The open
question, for me, is in which box \strong is supposed to fit. Is it more
like \emph or is it more like \noun? My sense is that it's probably more
like \emph, in which case it ought to be handled like \emph. And if
there are other things that are more like \emph, then they should be
handled that way, too. But offhand, I can't think of any.
The really nice thing about this proposal is that it saves us all a lot
of work.
Richard
