[Sugar-devel] Journal feature request--more data in main display

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 18:14, Gary C Martin<gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> On 29 Jun 2009, at 16:07, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 16:55, Aleksey Lim<alsroot at member.fsf.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 02:39:22PM -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> We have about 60 characters worth of blank space in every Journal
>>>> entry. It would be a great help if we could display 40-50 characters
>>>> from the description field for each entry on the main page. We could
>>>> also drop off the word Activity from every Activity name.
>>>
>>> maybe using several views
>>> * one line view
>>> * full view(multi lined view)
>>> * thumbs
>>>
>>> btw I hope we'll decide to work on all these object list related
>>> features in one place, now we have Journal, Library(partially
>>> implemented)
>>> and not implemented Dairy(http://erikos.sweettimez.de/?p=742)
>>
>> Yup, I personally love the mockups at
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Journal .
>>
>> Other opinions?
>
> I like the intent, but I don't think the "activity centric" view has
> concrete enough spec to consider implementing yet. There is just way too
> much magic sauce in those mock-ups to my mind. The closest I've seen
> something like this implemented, is with Apple's iPhoto, where imported
> photos are auto arranged into single expandable "events" based on each
> photos date/time metadata. You're given a couple of preferences for
> adjusting the granularity (one event per week, one event per day, one event
> per 8hrs, one event per 2hrs). Works quite well most of the time, you can
> always manually merge two events into one, or split one event into two, if
> it gets them wrong.

I don't see that as so problematic. Activities are already saving the
items that go to the Objects view, we just may need (or not) to remove
some of the metadata and make them more document-like.

About the Actions view, we have a baseline for activities that is
"Worked on Paint for 15 minutes". But activities would be free to
change that to whatever makes most sense. I can see how the shell
would have a very hard time guessing how best to represent what the
user did in activities, but activities have much more information and
I think it's where we should put this logic.

> I guess we could make the "activity centric" view work in the same way, a
> fixed time slice that rolls up N hrs work into a collapsable/expandable
> block that the user can custom name (and/or some auto name based on the
> content).

Not sure we would need that, but we could use Projects as containers ;)

> The still raises lot's of questions, what happens when you resume some image
> you painted from way back to take a quick look? Where does it now show in
> activity centric view? Does it get removed from its old block positioning
> and to some new active block; perhaps it get multi-linked so now appears
> twice (you can still find it in the original old place and also find it in
> new place)?

I see past actions as immutable. In that case a new action entry would
be added, and if the Paint activity wishes, it can label it "Looked at
paint 'My house'" if it detects that no change happened. Or it can
just not create any entry if it makes most sense from that point of
view.

> -=-=-=-=-=-
>
> The grid/thumb view should be a top level button, not as is shown buried in
> a sub palette here:
>
>        http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Journal#09
>
>  I'd consider 2 primary view type buttons:
>
> 1). List view, just as we get now
> 2). Grid view, much like as implemented in Library

Sure, I don't see those mockups as a detailed spec for implementing
right now, but I think they explain some very exciting ideas for
moving forward.

> -=-=-=-=-=-
>
> Having said all this, it seems sensible to pick a few solid Journal
> improvements and just make some robust steps forward, like:

Totally agreed!

> - Showing tags under the title would be great (Tomeu, I will help where I
> can)

Hope to push my work on the journal treeview soon, then you can take
it and do whatever graphics modifications you want.

> - Batch entry modification (FWIW, don't like the tick box, that feels like
> an old school html web form hack)

Any alternative?

> - Better Anything toolbar filter palette (use a grid layout to minimise
> scrolling)

Yeah, that will be great. I think Walter already submitted a patch to
move the file types up.

> - Perhaps a Tag toolbar filter palette (could be a mini tag cloud)

Could you draw a quick napkin mockup to illustrate that?

Thanks,

Tomeu

> Regards,
> --Gary
>