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Prion
Got the auto-title mojo working
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Post by Prion »

With respect, but I beg to differ. Many apps showcase their capabilities by including pre-configured document templates, sample databases, you name it. In many cases I was surprised to see features at work which I had read about, but only understood in full when I had the opportunity to push a button and see what it did in a working context.
Granted, in all probability the pre-configured sample documents will not cater my needs completely, but it is a start. It offers motivation to get your hands dirty to achieve what you want and need and it also demonstrates that it can be done. I am all for it.

Prion
PS: Devonthink, Papyrus, Word <cough> even if we did not like the idea of sample documents, there is an expectation from the user's that cannot be ignored.
FA1
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Post by FA1 »

Prion wrote: Granted, in all probability the pre-configured sample documents will not cater my needs completely, but it is a start. It offers motivation to get your hands dirty to achieve what you want and need and it also demonstrates that it can be done. I am all for it.
I agree with you there. For example, as academics are one target audience, have a template for papers, and a tutorial for how to tweak the styles. That would be very useful I think.
nicka
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Post by nicka »

Many apps showcase their capabilities by including pre-configured document templates
Apple's Pages takes this to new heights. It practically is its templates.

I agree that templates are a good way in for some people. A lot of people want to get started creating content right away and for them it is unnatural to spend time at the beginning setting up styles.
For example, as academics are one target audience, have a template for papers
With footnotes and endnotes both enabled, I hope. I still think this should be set in each style set, not per document, but given that it is the way it is, producing a template set up like this is the only way to increase the chance that both are on the Insert>Note menu when an academic who is new to Mellel first needs to use them. (End of rant.)
BreakNeckRidge
Read the guide!
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Post by BreakNeckRidge »

Templates would be a great start, but they're not a substitute for a good interface.

For instance, let's say you want to make an outline. You look around in Mellel and find "Outline" under the "Window" menu. That pops open a sidebar titled "Outline." Okay, now what? It's entirely non-obvious. So you click the buttons at the bottom and one of them makes it so you just see "Structure." Okay, now what? It's not obvious, so you look in the menu bar and see "Insert." That sounds good, but there's no outline submenu, you have to go digging into the manual to learn that "Auto-title" is where you goto add outline items. And very few people would be able to guess that you could option click to get a contextual submenu to insert an outline item. So you finally insert a level 1 item, it pops up a window, you give it a name and then... it inserts that item name into the body of your document?! That's not how an outline is supposed to work. So you look into the manual again just to find out how to not have your outline item names show up in the body of your document and the manual starts delving into styles. Forget it.

A much better interface would be to add a 4th button at the bottom of the outline control panel with a plus button [+] that adds a new outline item. Then just make the default behavior act the way the vast majority of people will expect it to work when they first begin using the outline features and have it not insert the item name into the document body.

You could make a tutorial and a template for how to do outlines, but that's not a replacement for making the interface more obvious. Mellel is a good program, and worth buying, but Mellel's biggest drawback is it's needlessly difficult learning curve due to the interface.
zoul
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Post by zoul »

BreakNeckRidge wrote:For instance, let's say you want to make an outline.
This is interesting. I thought the Outline was a way to see the document structure _after_ you create it. I use the outline to check the overall document structure, to keep the title names consistent and sometimes to jump around in the document. It never occured to me that somebody would want to use it to create the structure of the document beforehand. From this perspective, the Mellel’s outline is somewhat different from the outline as found in various outliners and I find both the design and the implementation perfect.
nicka
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Post by nicka »

A much better interface would be to add a 4th button at the bottom of the outline control panel with a plus button [+] that adds a new outline item.
Right! I've wondered for ages why there isn't one there. There's even a little space where it would fit, just to the left of the 'Show' button. Even when you make the outline pane as small as it will go, there's still space.
FA1
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Post by FA1 »

zoul wrote:
BreakNeckRidge wrote:For instance, let's say you want to make an outline.
This is interesting. I thought the Outline was a way to see the document structure _after_ you create it. I use the outline to check the overall document structure, to keep the title names consistent and sometimes to jump around in the document. It never occured to me that somebody would want to use it to create the structure of the document beforehand. From this perspective, the Mellel’s outline is somewhat different from the outline as found in various outliners and I find both the design and the implementation perfect.
Yeah, I'm not sure that people are expecting it to be a mini-outliner that is separate from your document, but you might as well as have the option of an "add auto-title" button right there.
laup
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Post by laup »

verma wrote:
FA1 wrote:
I'm not in favour of prebuilt (Mellel-made) templates - that's not a developer's job. And no pre-built template will suit my needs (read: the needs of the publishers I write for): there is no such thing as a uniform set of templates that will suit everyone. Consequence: you'll have to do it yourself. And though it's time-consuming, it is a good way to learn how the programme works.
It's abolutely true that no reasonable number of templates would cover the waterfront becuase of combinatorial explositon with variations. However, given complete templates, it is much, much easier to do some customizing on the margin than to start from scratch or than to enhance a primitive template substantially. By changes on the margin I mean things like changing the fonts used, whether paragraphs have spaces between them, line spacing, and so on. Even customizing the variations is easy (given the tutorial). So, I agree with your cautions, but there are important matters of degree. As to whether it's the "developer's job," the better question is whether it's in the interest of the company to have some of its own templates to entice early users, or whether to leave such things entirely to the user community. There are pros and cons.
Paul
verma
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Post by verma »

pkensildavis wrote: By changes on the margin I mean things like changing the fonts used, whether paragraphs have spaces between them, line spacing, and so on. Even customizing the variations is easy (given the tutorial). So, I agree with your cautions, but there are important matters of degree. As to whether it's the "developer's job," the better question is whether it's in the interest of the company to have some of its own templates to entice early users, or whether to leave such things entirely to the user community. There are pros and cons.
I'm not sure if I understand your idea of templates very well. What you proposes as "changes in the margin" can best be dealt with using style sheet variations (ps, cs, pages) - I personally don't think this needs a real "template change". Templates, in my view, concern structural changes to a document (e.g. paper size, landscape or not, or specific structural requirements for a document (letter with predefined places for sender & addressee and so on ...).

For me, neither templates nor style sheets are the job of the Redlers - not that I don't trust they can come up with wonders, but I believe they'd rather spend their time on the "wiring". Sure, it's up to them to decide. And I'm certainly willing to send in a generic template with specific style sheets.

The templates that are currently included with Mellel are basic indeed, I agree, but I've never used them (apart from the generic one to start with). I'm not sure that a new user who is not familiar with stylesheets, cs, ps or page styles will come to understand the way it works by tweaking an existing template (and I suspect that more often that not, they will feel a little bit frustrated that it doesn't exactly pan out as they expected, and hence have to go through Don's tutorial or the Mellel guide anyway.

I personally don't think it's a matter of degree, but rather of approach. If I understood it well, the Mellel philosophy has been that in order to use the programme well, you'll need to get dirty (metaphorically) and explore, create and find out. From a pedagogical point of view, I fully support that, given that the manual and tutorial are really quite informative for the interested novice.
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