[Dev] Unusual collections and items

[Philippe Bossut]

Mimi Yin wrote:

> Another thing to consider is that in the future, we will have the 
> independent view selector back in the summary view area, so users will 
> be able to switch between the table view, the calendar view and maybe 
> some other crazier view altogether (timeline views, concept maps 
> views, thumbnail views etc) independent of the application area that 
> is selected.

I like this! This will separate the "filter" from the "view" aspect, 
both performed by the toolbar right now and the source of the issue we 
are talking about.
Having external contributors able to provide new innovative views of 
data is also something we should encourage. I have a couple of wacky 
ideas of my own I'd like to "parcelize" that way... (like the PCA view :) )

> But, I agree it's weird right now that you're in the Calendar and the 
> In collection and you overlay it with a user-defined collection, the 
> view switches from Table to Calendar with no feedback as to why that 
> has happened.

So, what about not forcing the view switching for the moment (in 0.6)? 
Anyway, as Sheila mentioned, this is a corner case for 0.6 since few 
people will ever see the In and Out collections.

> An alternative we considered was making it impossible to overlay the 
> In and Out and Trash collections with anything other than the In, Out 
> and Trash collections. In other words, table view collections can only 
> be overlayed with other table view collections. But this felt like yet 
> another exception to throw into the sidebar checkbox behavior that 
> would  make it both more complicated to implement and harder for the 
> user to grok.

I would stay away of creating UI exceptions and rules. We should have a 
UI that's elegant and does not impose or constrain the user. We can 
easily imagine cases where overlaying the Out box with a user defined 
collection can be useful and make sense.

Cheers,
- Philippe