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Re: Emacs setup assistants
From: |
Ted Zlatanov |
Subject: |
Re: Emacs setup assistants |
Date: |
Thu, 20 May 2004 15:07:35 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux) |
On Thu, 20 May 2004, address@hidden wrote:
> It would probably make sense to use some kind of outline mode in such
> a buffer, whereby the user first sees only an outline of the
> customization process (like one line per step); clicking on that line
> would then reveal the details of that step.
You're thinking like a programmer and/or power user :)
Normal users rarely appreciate this sort of view of the wizard
sequence. I think that for usability and simplicity, only the
Next/Previous/Cancel buttons should be allowed for navigation.
When Next can lead to multiple choices because the assistant nodes are
a tree instead of straight line, Next should do a depth-first
traversal in a consistent way (maybe alphabetically following nodes on
the same level). The point is, give the user the illusion of a
straight decision line that they can use back and forth consistently.
I'm not advocating that we copy a certain GUI, only that users will
be more comfortable if we confuse them less.
> Other buttons or links could lead to advanced customization options
> and in-depth descriptions for those who want that.
That's a good idea, but it should be clearly separated from the
regular assistant. Maybe @assistantadvanced tags should be used to
surround such options, and the user can show or hide them.
> In short, I'm talking about specialized interactive tutorial, and it
> seemed to me that Customize, if appropriately enhanced and augmented,
> could do the job. But even if not, I don't see why an infrastructure
> for such a feature could not have some other Lispy foundation, rather
> than a Texinfo foundation.
I absolutely agree Customize could be useful. So far in my
experiments to find a useful syntax, I have been doing something like
this:
@ifassistant
@node Hello, choose a server
@variable server :string "default.server.com"
@text
You can define the server: @variable{server}
@end text
@next (string-match ".com" server) "Set up a .com server"
@next (string-match ".org" server) "Set up a .org server"
@end ifassistant
and I think the Customize widgetry would fit perfectly inside the
text buffer. I don't think the regular Customize interface, with all
its text and extra options, will be right, this needs to be a more
lightweight version of the Customize interface.
Ted
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, (continued)
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Juri Linkov, 2004/05/19
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Eli Zaretskii, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Eli Zaretskii, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Eli Zaretskii, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Jon Ericson, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/20
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Eli Zaretskii, 2004/05/21
- Re: Emacs setup assistants,
Ted Zlatanov <=
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Eli Zaretskii, 2004/05/21
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Ted Zlatanov, 2004/05/21
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Per Abrahamsen, 2004/05/23
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Ted Zlatanov, 2004/05/24
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/24
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Ted Zlatanov, 2004/05/25
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Juri Linkov, 2004/05/25
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, A.J. Rossini, 2004/05/25
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, Miles Bader, 2004/05/25
- Re: Emacs setup assistants, David Kastrup, 2004/05/26