[Design] Re: Working of Text entry widget

[Mimi Yin]

Sending this to the list to open up discussion...

Some Context, as many of you know, Darshana has been working on our  
nifty new quick item entry, command-line-for-dummies UI. She's made a  
lot of progress just based on really rough wiki write-ups we did ages  
ago (http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ 
QuickItemEntry)...but now it's time to get serious about this and  
nail down the specifies of the interaction and workflow.

I've pulled together a proposal here, based on conversations,  
Darshana, Jeffrey and I have been having and Darshana's notes (see  
bottom): http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ 
QuickItemEntryProposal

A few more details came out as I was writing this up.

1. There is a difference between just starting to type and having  
keyboard focus automagically move to the command line field; AND  
Explicitly clicking into the command line field. I think in the  
former case, you want to just do whatever the default command is. In  
the latter case, you want to select the entire field and potentially  
replace the default command with your own.

2. There are potentially illegal multiple commands that we need to  
deal with (e.g. /NOTE /NOTE or /SEARCH /NOTE) We can zap  
them...disallow them, or just ignore them, or pop up a dialog?

3. There's some trickery about what we do with items created in the  
command line...
+ Add them to the Dashboard collection?
+ Add them to the currently selected collection?

It clearly depends on what the user is trying to do...and I'm not  
sure that there's a good way to divine user intent. The closest thing  
I could come up with was:

+ If you're creating an item that matches the context you're in, add  
it to both the Dashboard and the currently selected collection (aka  
the thing I'm looking at right now).

+ If you're creating an item that doesn't match the context you're  
in, add it just to the Dashboard...you had a brainwave in the middle  
of doing something else and we want to help you record as quickly as  
possible without disturbing your current context.

I will try to mock-up a few screens as well and add it to the wiki  
page...But here's a written proposal to start with.

Thx! Mimi

On Aug 21, 2006, at 3:59 PM, Darshana Chhajed wrote:

> Hi Jeffrey and Mimi,
> I have written down what we discussed today. Please correct me if I  
> am wrong, or elaborate more if you think its confusing or  
> incomplete or if I have forgotten something.
> Thanks.
> Darshana
>
> *
> Working of the Text entry widget:
> *There should be a drop-down list of icons representing items  
> (mail, event, task, note, search) on the left of the text widget.  
> By default, the icon representing the item created in that view  
> will be selected. For eg: If the calendar is open, the "event" icon  
> will be selected, is Mail is open, "msg" icon is selected. The  
> corresponding command will be displayed in the text widget.i.e. "/ 
> Event" will appear in the text widget. On clicking on the text  
> widget, "/Event" would be erased. An event will be created  
> depending on the text the user enters .(assuming it is not a command)

I don't think we can delete the command-text because otherwise, text  
will disappear as you type it?

>
> If the user types "/",  it is a command. If "/s" is entered, "/ 
> Search" will be auto completed after hitting space since that is  
> the only command starting with "s". If there is no command which  
> can be auto completed then the default item of that view will be  
> created with the text entered by the user. For eg: "/Foo meeting"  
> will create a task with name "/Foo meeting" if we are currently  
> viewing Tasks.

I think even for the default, we want to keep the command label: / 
TASK Foo

>
> If the user wants to create an item stamped as multiple things, he  
> would have to say " /Mail /Task" in the text widget.
>
> If the user starts creating an item, and if he changes the view  
> before hitting return, the text in the widget should be retained.  
> After hitting return in the text widget, the item should be created  
> and the text widget should get the command and icon relevant to the  
> current view.

Yup to both of these.

>

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