[Chandler-dev] Fwd: [Bug 6371] Support for a multiple detail view

[Grant Baillie]

Hi, Mimi

More inline ...

On 8 Mar, 2008, at 06:22, Mimi Yin wrote:

> Grant has started looking into making it possible to pop-up a  
> separate detail view window so that users can view and edit multiple  
> items at once as well as choose to really focus on a single item  
> (e.g. when taking notes, reading a long write-up, etc).
>
> There is still a significant amount of work to do to get this  
> working properly. I had some design requirements to add as well ;)  
> and thought I'd send it to the list for review.
>
> I don't think any of these things should *block* a 1.0 release.  
> They're nice to haves we should keep in mind if they're trivial to  
> implement.
>
> Mock-up: https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=5028&action=edit
>
> 1. Include a toolbar with the Send/Update button. It'd be nice if  
> once you're finished writing something up, you didn't have to go  
> back to the main window and hunt for the item in order to Send it out.

Probably not difficult ... that functionality should be available  
through menus, too.

> 2. Display the item-Title in the window's title bar.

Done :).

> 3. Add a 'SHOW/HIDE DETAILS' feature. I think oftentimes, the desire  
> for a separate detail view is motivated by really wanting to zero in  
> on the Note field in particular. I've heard users talk about it as:  
> I find myself wanting to open up a plain text file and start typing  
> there first before entering it into Chandler.
>
> Hidden State (The default state when popping up a separate DV)
> - Markup Bar
> - TItle
> - SHOW DETAILS link above the Notes field
>
> Shown State
> - All Detail View fields
>
> Note: Clicking on the Addressing/Calendar stamps should = clicking  
> on SHOW DETAILS

My guess is that this isn't too much work, as there's already  
infrastructure for showing/hiding parts of the detail view.

> One issue we *do* need to resolve no matter what is how does the  
> user pop up the separate DV. We're a bit in a quandary because the  
> convention for popping up a separate detail view (d-click on the  
> item row) doesn't work for us because our items (at least in the  
> table) are editable. So we could...
>
> - Add 'expand' icon in the mark-up bar
> - Add 'EXPAND' link above the Notes field - right aligned. (This  
> only makes sense if we implement SHOW/HIDE functionality)

Is "expand" really the correct word here? Regardless, these should be  
straightforward to implement.

> - Disable d-click for editing items in-place and re-purpose it for  
> popping up a separate DV

Personally, I never double-click to edit in the summary table, and  
rarely do so in the calendar, so this would work for me. But maybe  
other people have different opinions?

> - Make a slow 2-click work for editing items in-place (Mac convention)
> - Tab should still work for editing items in-place
>
> Grant, what's the easiest thing to do?

For testing, I just added a menu item. I had originally been thinking  
menu + context menu, as well as some variation on double-click, e.g.  
double-click with modifier key, or double-click on non-editable column  
of summary view. I think those wouldn't be hard to do. The "slow  
double-click" route is a little trickier code-wise, and might be a  
little too Mac-ish?

Anyway, I noticed I didn't really answer the question ;). The bottom  
line is that none of the above is especially hard to implement.

--Grant