Re: Red cursor

Alan Horkan wrote:
> If you mean we should remove Overwrite Mode then I agree. (The keybinding
> for switching to Vi/Emacs modes was disabled long long ago to similarly
> prevent users getting accidentally trapped.)
>
> We should definately not remove the red cursor without replacing it with
> something else which makes it so easy to identify the problem of users
> trapped in Overwrite Mode. The red cursor is the symptom not the problem.
> This comes up so frequently no one should be in any doubt anymore that it
> is a real problem for ordinary users, our archetypal Church Secretary.
> This is only the tip of the iceberg, this problem affects many users and
> they do not know how to get out of it without asking someone, the solution
> is too difficult to find on their own.
>
> For those few users who want to use Overwrite mode it would not be a big
> deal to make them go through an extra step or two.

The problem is that user press a key, the caret (insertion point) turns
Red (most of them notice, but I'm still convinced that this is not
enough) and it start overwriting as they discover (a better user
feedback would make things more obvious as Red is not intuitive for that).

The problem lies that they don't know which key they pressed and how to
revert it.

Several solutions to the problems:

1/ better user feedback with the caret. The suggestion in "Humane
Interface", by Jef Raskin
(http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201379376/figuierenet-20) is
quite adequate: the caret has also "higlighted" text next to it to show
about the replacement.
Or something like having the caret turn into a square to cover the next
letter, showing that it will overwrite which is IMHO a better compromise.

2/ better user feedback of the mode switch with a different way to
toggle it. INS in the status bar is not really visible. I don't remember
if clicking on it do anything, but if not that could be one of the things.
Possible other way are:
  -have clippy tell you
  -have a dialog popup the first time you press insert key (with a
default of "Don't show again"). Annoying but the user get the message.
Combined to the caret feedback could work
  -largely improve the status bar, but we are reaching another user
interface paradigm maybe with a notification bubble above the status bar.

3/ just remove the keybinding. After all, I'm pretty it is largely under
used. I myself got confused when that happened.... in Emacs the first
time, and there are actually some mode switched by keyboard shortcuts
that I don't know how to switch out (still in Emacs).

I'm open to other suggestion, but given how many user make the mistaken,
there is definitely a design problem that should be adressed, and no
technical reason should prevent us from doing it. It is the machine that
must adapt to the human, no the other way.

Hub
-----------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word
unsubscribe in the message body.
Received on Fri May 26 18:34:23 2006