Re: [lmi] InputSequence questions

[Vaclav Slavik]

On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 17:03 +0000, Greg Chicares wrote:
> > (c) the number of intervals is small, ~6 even for complicated
> >     expressions, and almost always <10 or so
> 
> Oh. I hadn't thought of that. But maybe it's okay to limit the GUI
> to a "reasonable" number of rows.

I didn't think of it as a hard limit. Rather, it's an observation that
this UI design doesn't work well for more than a handful of rows. 

> feel wrong. OTOH, if the dialog contains a grid control instead of
> many discrete controls, then a scrollable grid might be okay.

A grid helps in that people are used to scrolling Excel sheets, but it
doesn't make it easier to grasp the whole sequence either.

> Perfect. (IMO, that is; other opinions are welcome, but really
> must be expressed soon.) If we change "When" to "Until", then
> it becomes simpler still because "until" need not be repeated.

But it would no longer be readable as text, then. That is, "0 until year
5" is in English and makes it easier to understand the control for a
first-time user. "0 year 5" is cryptic and requires being familiar with
the UI or reading the manual...

> > * There's the problem with "until" that you mentioned yourself; it's not
> >   clear whether the interval is closed or open. I hope that this can be
> >   fixed by better wording alone (any ideas?). If not, the "When" header
> >   may spell it out ("Until when (not including the endpoint)").
> 
> We'll restrict the GUI to '[)' intervals. Then "until" is always suitable.

The question is how to convey this to the user. It's the kind of thing
that is hard to remember (for me, anyway), so some hint directly in the
UI would IMHO be in order.


Regards,
Vaclav