[Sugar-devel] [NEW FEATURE] write to the journal whenever you want

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Walter,

On 19 Nov 2009, at 19:32, Walter Bender wrote:

> Many of us love the Naming Alert, but even more seem to despise it.
> With this feature, it is invoked from a toolbar button instead of
> automatically invoked on quit. It lets the learning take notes
> repeatedly and at any time during an activity session.
> 
> See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Write_to_journal_anytime
> 
> This is a quick hack. We may want to revisit the toolbar integration
> and certainly need a better icon :)

:-)

The first thing that comes to mind is something Journal icon like (but still distinguishable from the Journal activity icon), the original Journal with pencil seems a good place to work from (as Eduardo already mentioned).

> Comments?

Yes, I do like the intent, though I'm not sure we have activity toolbar space for another new icon. How about the whole dialogues content be placed in the activity icon secondary toolbar design (I think Simon raised this once before)? This would also make it non-modal, so you can add notes and interact with your activity canvas without the 'click the tick' edit cycle. The secondary toolbar does scale to fit the content height, but you'd need to be sensitive with the amount of space used as some activities will layout badly if too much of their canvas space is eaten away. I could try a few mockups if this approach seems reasonable.

One thing that does seem a shame is that this indicates the Journal UI for adding details is not easy enough to use. Ideally we would have one single UI as part of the Journal for entering all entry details (for both code maintenance and design simplicity reasons). Activities could then providing a quick way to switch there. When the current original naming dialogue was first added I was hoping a way would be found to replace the new dialogue by just switching directly to the existing Journal detail view instead. Perhaps this should be the design goal (improving Journal integration/use rather than new separate activity based dialogues).

Regards,
--Gary