Re: Full-screen editing
Lyx user wrote: So my question is if full-screen editing is a feature that is possible, interesting and desired in LyX? In my opinion it is well in- line with the LyX-philosophy of focusing on the writing. I think this is a great idea. In addition, for this to work well, all actions should be available from the keyboard without going through menus. All menu choices are supposed to be available by keyboard. For actions without a specific hotkey, this consist of bringing up the menu by keyboard though. Of course the main menu could be invisible but active in a full-screen mode - so that it shows itself when the user presses ALT+something. Helge Hafting
Re: Full-screen editing
On Jul 27, 2007, at 12:58 , Helge Hafting wrote: Anders Ekberg wrote: Previous mail disappeared in cyberspace, so a new attempt: The idea is to blank out *everything* except the document. This includes window decorations, menus, etc. The resulting appearance actually feels quite different from using solid background color and empty desktop. The idea is to use this mode when you want to focus solely on writing. If you do copy and paste or want to interact with other applications, you switch back to normal window mode (usually with Esc). Normally you can also change to other applications with the usual Command-tab (or similar). So the idea is not to force a new windowing solution onto users, but to provide an alternative that is very useful for some situations. Thank you for a detailed explanation. The ability to quickly switch back to 'normal' removes all worries. So the point is to blank out absolutely everything else - to avoid distractions. How do such apps deal with the fact that a big screen is way too wide with a normal font size? I can see several solutions: * Also switch to a very big font, so the entire screen still is about 66 characters wide. The obvious disadvantage is that you get few lines. * Show two columns of text, or perhaps 3 on those 30" screens. Looks good, but so far nobody made a two-column display for LyX. * Very wide margin, unless the wide screen can be turned 90 degrees. Wasteful of space that could be put to better use. Helge Hafting The approach I have seen is to have a fairly large font together with wide margins (normally possible to set by the user). You obviously waste space, but that's a relatively minor issue (at least for me) when you are just focusing on writing. Your idea with two-columns is something I have never seen, but it sounds like an interesting idea, especially now with wide-screen displays coming up. A possible implementation could perhaps be to have two views of the same document that are locked to each other (I am completely ignorant of QT, so take it as a wild idea). /Anders PS! The JDarkroom application is Java freeware, so it should run on any platform if you like to test.
Re: Full-screen editing
Anders Ekberg wrote: Previous mail disappeared in cyberspace, so a new attempt: The idea is to blank out *everything* except the document. This includes window decorations, menus, etc. The resulting appearance actually feels quite different from using solid background color and empty desktop. The idea is to use this mode when you want to focus solely on writing. If you do copy and paste or want to interact with other applications, you switch back to normal window mode (usually with Esc). Normally you can also change to other applications with the usual Command-tab (or similar). So the idea is not to force a new windowing solution onto users, but to provide an alternative that is very useful for some situations. Thank you for a detailed explanation. The ability to quickly switch back to 'normal' removes all worries. So the point is to blank out absolutely everything else - to avoid distractions. How do such apps deal with the fact that a big screen is way too wide with a normal font size? I can see several solutions: * Also switch to a very big font, so the entire screen still is about 66 characters wide. The obvious disadvantage is that you get few lines. * Show two columns of text, or perhaps 3 on those 30" screens. Looks good, but so far nobody made a two-column display for LyX. * Very wide margin, unless the wide screen can be turned 90 degrees. Wasteful of space that could be put to better use. Helge Hafting
Re: Full-screen editing
On 26 jul 2007, at 15.05, Helge Hafting wrote: Anders Ekberg wrote: At least on the Mac side full-screen editing has become standard with "writer's editors" (WriteRoom, Avenir, CopyWrite, Scrivener, ...). It is now starting to appear in word processors (I think Nisus Writer is the latest example). So my question is if full-screen editing is a feature that is possible, interesting and desired in LyX? In my opinion it is well in-line with the LyX-philosophy of focusing on the writing. If you haven't tried it, to get an example of full-screen editing, you can download JDarkroom ( http://www.codealchemists.com/ jdarkroom/ ), which is small, free and (arguably) a bit quirky. Note that what Microsoft Word calls "Full screen mode" is something completely different. Perhaps you could give a short explanation of what this full-screen editing is about - for those of us who don't know any of the editors mentioned? LyX support maximization, but surely that isn't what you mean? Also, I would never want LyX to use up all of my big screen. I need screen room for reference material, such as webpages, pdf readers, and other LyX documents. LyX is nice in that it can be set up to use most of its screen area for the main window - it don't _waste_ screen space. So it coexists nicely with my other needed windows. Also, using the entire screen for text gives way too long lines for comfortable reading, especially when using a wide-screen monitor. If the answer is "margins" then you're just wasting space seemingly for no reason. Some likes fullscreen apps in order to not get distracted - but the answer then is to use a solid background color (instead of a distracting image) and of course no stupid "desktop" with icons. The screen is then perfectly tidy! Helge Hafting Previous mail disappeared in cyberspace, so a new attempt: The idea is to blank out *everything* except the document. This includes window decorations, menus, etc. The resulting appearance actually feels quite different from using solid background color and empty desktop. The idea is to use this mode when you want to focus solely on writing. If you do copy and paste or want to interact with other applications, you switch back to normal window mode (usually with Esc). Normally you can also change to other applications with the usual Command-tab (or similar). So the idea is not to force a new windowing solution onto users, but to provide an alternative that is very useful for some situations. Anders
Re: Full-screen editing
> So my question is if full-screen editing is a feature that is > possible, interesting and desired in LyX? In my opinion it is well in- > line with the LyX-philosophy of focusing on the writing. I think this is a great idea. In addition, for this to work well, all actions should be available from the keyboard without going through menus. By the way, it is possible to get a true full screen in Word, but it takes quite a bit of fiddling.
Re: Full-screen editing
Anders Ekberg wrote: At least on the Mac side full-screen editing has become standard with "writer's editors" (WriteRoom, Avenir, CopyWrite, Scrivener, ...). It is now starting to appear in word processors (I think Nisus Writer is the latest example). So my question is if full-screen editing is a feature that is possible, interesting and desired in LyX? In my opinion it is well in-line with the LyX-philosophy of focusing on the writing. If you haven't tried it, to get an example of full-screen editing, you can download JDarkroom ( http://www.codealchemists.com/jdarkroom/ ), which is small, free and (arguably) a bit quirky. Note that what Microsoft Word calls "Full screen mode" is something completely different. Perhaps you could give a short explanation of what this full-screen editing is about - for those of us who don't know any of the editors mentioned? LyX support maximization, but surely that isn't what you mean? Also, I would never want LyX to use up all of my big screen. I need screen room for reference material, such as webpages, pdf readers, and other LyX documents. LyX is nice in that it can be set up to use most of its screen area for the main window - it don't _waste_ screen space. So it coexists nicely with my other needed windows. Also, using the entire screen for text gives way too long lines for comfortable reading, especially when using a wide-screen monitor. If the answer is "margins" then you're just wasting space seemingly for no reason. Some likes fullscreen apps in order to not get distracted - but the answer then is to use a solid background color (instead of a distracting image) and of course no stupid "desktop" with icons. The screen is then perfectly tidy! Helge Hafting
Full-screen editing
At least on the Mac side full-screen editing has become standard with "writer's editors" (WriteRoom, Avenir, CopyWrite, Scrivener, ...). It is now starting to appear in word processors (I think Nisus Writer is the latest example). So my question is if full-screen editing is a feature that is possible, interesting and desired in LyX? In my opinion it is well in- line with the LyX-philosophy of focusing on the writing. If you haven't tried it, to get an example of full-screen editing, you can download JDarkroom ( http://www.codealchemists.com/ jdarkroom/ ), which is small, free and (arguably) a bit quirky. Note that what Microsoft Word calls "Full screen mode" is something completely different. Anders
