How Rude

[Max]

Ted,

>> I'm partial to your suggestion. Let us think different, but at the
>> same time I want most of the insanely great functionality of More
>> before the other features.
> 
> Sure. MORE, but also Xemacs, Palimpsest and InfoDepot, each of which
> are best in their own way. Even Acta had neat capabilities missing in
> MORE. I eschew a fundamentalist focus on MORE alone. It shows a lack
> of imagination and experience with parallel paradigms. Since the mix
> of Omni and Cocoa gives us a new platform, why not revisit old
> assumptions?
> 

Well, let's find common ground where we can-- my imagination and your ad
homimen attacks aside, many programs have capabilities missing in More. That
doesn't have any bearing on whether we should build some or even all of the
great features in More into OO. Indeed, let's revisit old assumptions.
That's what I said in my post.

>> ...
>> I agree. It should look pretty, do PDF flawlessly, and be easy to use.
> 
> I don't think it will be possible to have a discussion at all if you
> think what we are talking about is prettiness and mere ease of use.
> The Mac way is behind much of what you like with MORE, or was a dozen
> years back. But life is more friendly now. You like the changing
> cursor but don't want dynamic contextual menus for instance? You
> don't want XML database links? You don't want smart drag and drop?
> You don't want in-line palettes? Macros? Docklet fragments? Popup
> annotations (and popup views of collapsed or folded material)?
> Hyperlinks? Multiple views? Progress tags? Draggable formatting?
> Agent-based templates? Style-based background transparency?
> 
> MORE didn't even remember my partly collapsed state when re-expanded.
> Frustrating as all getout.

You're putting words into my mouth. I didn't say anything about not liking
XML or drag and drop etc. If you think those things are important, then
define them for the general purpose audience and argue for them. Leave me
out of it. 

> 
>> Does putting these mini-outlines in the second column of OO count?
>> More had a feature called "comments" that did this as well, but it
>> didn't allow outlines inside. Perhaps OO should do this.
> 
> MORE's "comments" were so limited, they drove me from the product.
> And no, the second column approach wouldn't work for me. But it does
> bring up a clever notion. Can we have the "column" dynamically adjust
> at different levels, sort of a cross between columns and tabs?
> 

I don't know that dynamically adjusting columns at different levels would be
a good idea if DA means what it sounds like here. It sounds unorganized. Why
not just put the comments in the column directly adjacent to the headers?
Already you can add extra columns and keep them empty so that you get the
same effect-- columns that look like tabs. One problem is having many,
different sized columns that don't allow the user to see where the
"comments" are placed. Folding text would help because then all the columns
could be reduced in size-- except the ones you're currently working on.

I think we may be on common ground here. Folding text anyone?

Max