»

[Desler]

It has come to my attention that it has been quite a dull month with nothing really new to discuss (same old morphos vs. amigaos discussions) So for people who are bored at the moment I would really like some help:
Im currently trying to build a word editor for the amiga. Right now its on an early stage, but eventually there will be support for outline fonts, kerning, somewhat advanced picture support. The main designer goal is to make it so open that support for spellchecking, loading and saving in different formats and all the other nice things you would expect from an editor, can be implemented easy afterwards.
This is what I need help with:

1. Which functions would YOU like
2. Im a total **** with GUI and graphics. Could anyone give a suggestion for a nice friendly GUI. (Screenshots very much appriciated)

Bear in mind that the development is in its very early stages and that I dont have anything to show right now

[Desler]

Sugestions anyone???

[Trezzer]

Personally I prefer CygnusED on Amiga, which means you won't need much in terms of a GUI

Other than that I like NEdit on *nix. You can have a look at that if you want some inspiration.

[Kay]

Well, it seems you've got some good ideas. If I am to suggest anything, it would be that you pay special attention to text flow around pictures, and picture layout. Oh, and picture positioning should be relative to the page rather than the text. Pictures moving out of position as a result of a change in the text is not good. Perhaps a function for locking pictures to their current absolute position on the page could be possible?

Good luck with your project! :-)

Kay

[Desler]

If I am to suggest anything, it would be that you pay special attention to text flow around pictures, and picture layout.

That have been one of my big concerns. I will try to make it so the pic can be anchored as a character or to a paragraph

[Mason]

If you need some images for the GUI please have a look at the "AppMI" collection on my homepage.

[gnarly]

I hate to say it, but I like Microsoft Word's GUI, so that'd be one place to start.

Wordworth's was good, but needed some improvements IMO.

I like customisation.
I like small.
I like colourful on a light grey background.

However, making the interface should be the least of your concerns right now. Just make buttons with words on and make it pretty later :-)

[Rassilon]

Ok here's a list of things I would like (culled from my use of MSWord at work, and Amigawriter/Wordworth at home)

1) UNLIKE Amigawriter there should NOT be a floating Main toolbar, keep it part of the main window.

2) Tables are a must for any sort of advanced documents.

3) Spellchecking as you type is a handy feature (is missing from Ww6 and AW).

4) Mail merge functions.

5) A print preview (I have not seen an Amiga WP with this function!)

Thats all I can think of at the mo, should be enough to be getting on with ;-)

Cheers

Rassilon

[Desler]

Thanks so far

@Mason Thanks for the collection, it looks great. Nevertheless if anyone has other ideas or perhaps if anyone have a good idea how put the icons together...

@Gnarly Yeah I know... Cant start running before I learned how to crawl... But then again, having peoples suggestion how the GUI should look could give guide lines for which kind of functuability people are expecting... And it could be fun to see what people could put together

@Rassilon
1) I agree but I will probably try to make it configurable

2) Planned but not until a later stage

4) Ohhh im not to keen about mixing those two

5) Shouldnt be a prob :-)

Thanks so far

[ShadesOfGrey]

All too often I find too much screen real estate is gobbled up by menu/tool bars. Sure you can disable some and customize others, but sometimes I just wish they weren't there!!!

So, here's something I'd like to see (or not see). No menu bar and no tool bars. Instead you call up the menu/tool bar(s) with a R/L-Amiga + Mouse click (or for users with mice having 3 or more buttons, assign dedicated button(s) to call up the menu/tool bar(s)), in much the same way MagicMenu does.

Can't think of anything else at the moment.

[Billsey]

by gnarly on 2002/12/17 7:43:00

making the interface should be the least of your concerns right now. Just make buttons with words on and make it pretty later

Now, there's a novel concept. :-)

Ever have those times when you just can't seem to figure out the icons in a program? Why is it that so few programs have the functions of the buttons listed on the buttons as words (along with the icons, of course)?

[SlimJim]

I write long texts. I don't need any fancy picture
objects or tables. My priority would be getting a stable
(extremely stable!) word processor. That and high speed,
so that no lag can be detected when editing large portions
of text. Perhaps reduce amount of supported formats.
Support of standard layout features such as line breaks
and paragraph indents (and little more) would be more than
sufficient for almost all texts I write, including reports.
Different sized fonts is good, but not required. I would miss
the italic/bold/plain setting though :-)...

GUI-wise, I wish for as much page real estate on the
screen as possible. No rulers, no toolbars, no fancy buttons
(except perhaps a slim status bar so you know saving
works ok). If there is a GUI, it should be completely
removable, everything accessable as keyboard shortcuts,
including style-changes and file operations. When I write, I
don't want to start moving the mouse to change settings.

Final Writer goes a long way in that respect. I have put
'italic' style on the F2 button for example and must have
written >600 pages in FW97. Too bad it's not very stable on my
setup.
.
SlimJim

(Xemacs (on Linux) would be my cup of tea if one could let
it do proper indentation and line breaks. Anyone knows if
you can set those features anywhere in xemacs?)

[The_Editor]

If you were only interested in text processing then we already have a "Killer" app in

Protext !! I never saw what the last incarnation was like though .. The one that included picture support.

[sTix]

Footnotes! is a must have!

[sTix]

Footnotes! is a must have!